


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 


■M 






























































































































































































h 
















♦ 










































«** vi 5 -• 








































BY ROSE PORTER. 


SUMMER DRIFT-WOOD for the Winter Fire. i6mo, cloth. $1.00 

THE WINTER FIRE. A Sequel to “ Summer Drift-wood.” i6mo, 
cloth, $1.25. 

FOUNDATIONS; or, Castles in the Air. i6mo, cloth, $1.00. 

UPLANDS AND LOWLANDS; or, Three Chapters in a Life. i6mo, 
cloth. $1.25. 

THE YEARS THAT ARE TOLD. i6mo, cloth. $1.25. 

A SONG AND A SIGH. i6mo, cloth. $1.25. 

IN THE MIST. i6mo, cloth. $i.*5. 

CHARITY, SWEET CHARITY. i6mo, cloth. $1.25. 

HEART'S-EASE. Thoughts for each day in the week. Printed 
with a red line, and tied with ribbon. 35 cents. 

8K1IT, PREPAID, ON RECEIPT OF PRICE. FRACTIONAL AMOUNTS CAN 
BE REMITTED IN POSTAGE STAMPS. 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 

900 Broadway, Cor. zoth Si., New York 




OUR SAIN T S. 

A 

FAMILY STORY. 



ROSE PORTER, 

\ > 

AUTHOR OF “SUMMER DRIFTWOOD”; “ IN THE MIST ” ; “CHARITY, 

SWEET CHARITY” ; ETC. 







NEW YORK: 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 

goo Broadway, Cor. 20TH Street. 




\ 

COPYRIGHT, l88l, BY 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY. 


EDWARD O. JENKINS, 
Printer and Stereotyper , 
20 North William St. 


NEW YORK : 

ROBERT RUTTER, 
Binder , 

116 and 118 East 14th Street. 


“ The Saints above are stars in Heaven — 

What are the Saints on earth ? 

Faith is their fixed \ unswerving root , 

Hope their unfading flower , 

Fair deeds of Charity their fruit.” 

“ In the New Testament the term Saint is applied to 
all believers , as being separated from the world ' 
consecrated to God \ and destined for holiness .” 

“ Sin is the creature will revolting against the creator 
will. Sin is the slightest act that means No, to 
God. It begins back of action. It begins in 
thought, which is the seed of action.” 

“ Think, and be careful what thou art within. 

For there is sin in the desire of sin : 

Think, and be thankful, in a different case, 

For there is grace in the desire of grace 


( 5 ) 


















* 


* 




































t 










PART FIRST. 






“ The Bible Saints were not the heroes of romance , 
for then they might have been painted spotless . They 
were the men of real life , and the details of that life 
sometimes guilty enough. But , then , life was an ear- 
nest thing with them. It was transgression , if you will, 
but then it was sore, buffeting struggle after that. — It 
was the penitence of men bent manfully on turning 
back to God. And so they fought their way back till 
they struggled out of the thick darkness into the clear 
light of day and peace. 

“ Let. us lay this to heart. It is not the having been 
‘ far-off ’ that makes peace impossible, it is anything 
which keeps a man away from Christ 

ROBERTSON. 


( 9 ) 








OUR SAINTS; 

A FAMILY STORY. 


I. 

r I ''HERE are only two of us left in this 
home-nest, — all the others flew away 
long ago. 

But when my story begins there were four 
sisters, and four brothers. — Such a troop of 
young ones for a little mother to guide and 
control, the oldest not out of his teens, and 
the youngest only a six-year-old girl. 

We were as equally divided, my mother 
used to say, as the halves of a globe-shaped 
gem. Four with eyes as blue as the sky, 
thorough Saxons in feature, and fair tinting 
of complexion, and hair, — and with Saxon 
hearts too, that loved old England so well, 
we thought it, — as many another has, — the 
happiest land the sun shone on. 


12 


OUR SA/JVTS. 


Four with dark eyes, and features clear cut, 
nut-brown hair, and that piquant grace of 
gesture and varying expression which be- 
longed to our mother, who was a daughter of 
France ; and with natures a bit fiery, tempers 
a bit quick perchance, but spite this, my dark- 
eyed brothers, Hugh and Yvo, my sisters, 
Zita and Eulalie, had loving and true hearts. 

We others were Francis, — and he is the 
brother who still calls this old nest, home, and 
who has persuaded me to write this record of 
our lives, — Herbert and Bridget, whom we 
always call Britta, our shining light, — Bridget, 
who was named for the grandmother of Irish 
descent, and myself Maud, in memory of 
Saint Maud, daughter of the old Saxon count 
with whom far back in the centuries my father 
traced kinship. 

Saint Maud, who from childhood, as the old 
record tells, lived the life of the pure in heart 
who see God, and thus possessed the truest 
greatness. — Saint Maud, who lived in the 
world, and yet was not of it. 

My mother chose our names, with, as we 


OUR SAINTS. 


13 


came to know even while we were yet chil- 
dren, a deeper meaning than mere musical 
sound and harmony of utterance. — She had 
some quaint fancies, this mother of ours, that 
were closely linked with the early associations 
of her childhood’s home in sunny France, 
where Sabbath after Sabbath, and on festival 
and saints’ days, she had. gone with her father 
and mother to worship in the village church, 
or to learn from the parish priest. 

A good old man, with that charity of heart 
and mind that recognized, “ one Lord, one 
faith, one baptism, one God and Father of 
all,” underlying the many creeds of many 
sects, and peoples. 

I think it was because she had been thus 
early trained in a school of Love, because her 
dear heart was so permeated with “ that love 
which looketh kindly, and the wisdom which 
looketh soberly bn all things,” that my mother 
was able to so easily assimilate with the 
change in form and worship, that held sway 
in this English home, to which my father 
brought her. 


H 


OUR SAINTS. 


She was of a deeply earnest nature, that re- 
sponded like the chords of a musical harp to 
the lightest touch of beauty, and vibrated to 
every high-toned elevating influence. And 
often during the latter years of her dear life, 
did she tell me, how from the very first hour 
of their meeting, my father uplifted her heart 
and mind, as the oak uplifts the vine, that 
clings to it for support. 

A common enough metaphor, but neverthe- 
less like most commonplace things full of 
tender significance, for while the oak uplifts , 
how often the tendrils of the vine reach out 
and beyond the massive branches to which it 
clings. 

The significance of the commonplace ! — If I 
had been a scholar I would have penned more 
than one page on this subject, choosing for a 
text Aaron’s rod that budded. 

My mother’s parents had married late in 
life, and happy in the most happy wedded 
love, scarcely ever left the old Chateau, her 
childhood’s home. 

Hence she grew up a child in all the sweet 


OUR SAINTS. 15 

qualities of a child-like heart, yet with a gentle 
gravity of thought, blended with bright 
gleams of vivacity, as light and shade blend 
on meadow-grass, when the day is sunshiny, 
save for the fleecy cloudlets that dance in the 
blue above. 

The angel-winged clouds, as the peasant 
children in far-away France call them. 

She was only a girl of eighteen when my 
father wooed, wed, and brought her to this 
English manor-house, — Glentwood Hall, — 
our home, as indeed it has been the home of 
our ancestors for many and many a century. 

For the Glentwoods of Glentwood Hall, 
rank among the oldest, of the many old fami- 
lies of this ancient county of Devonshire. 


II. 

1 AM tempted to linger and describe this 
dear home, — my home ever since I can 
remember, with but that brief spring-time, 
when I went forth one April a smiling bride, 
and returned before the May days had slipped 
into June, — a widow. 

But I do not like that word, — for he is mine 
still I think, only, — he is with God in heaven, 
— and, — God is with me on earth, — yet, though 
God is with us both, there is such a difference 
between heaven and earth, such a dif- 

ference ! 

And yet it is written, the kingdom of heav- 
en is within you,— and “ it is not distance that 
separates us from the spirit land.” 

Our home, — from well-nigh every high out- 
look for miles and miles around you can catch 
a view of its gable roof, and tower, though as 
you approach by the way of the park, you 
(16) 


OUR SAINTS. 


1 7 

have scarcely more than an occasional glimpse 
through the opening trees of the ivy-covered 
walls, and mullioned, diamond-latticed win- 
dows. 

The Hall is in the parish of Milton-Abbot, 
a beautifully situated village on the river 
Tamar, and the parish church is almost as 
dear to us, as our home, and to my eyes there 
never was a more beautiful church, though I 
know full well its beauty of arches, mould-, 
ings, and windows, is much mutilated by 
time, and sorely needs renovating, or restor- 
ing, as the modern enterprisers call it, but 
which to my conservative notions, always 
seems akin to destroying. 

During the spring and summer time, the 
door that is prefaced by the porch, — that fills 
the square of the tower — almost always stands 
wide open. Preaching as an open church-door 
ever does by suggestion, the never-ceasing 
call of the church’s Master, — “ Come unto 
Me, ye weary, I will give you rest.” 

I often go within for a quiet tarrying, on 
my way to and from the village, where I 


2 


i8 


OUR SAINTS . 


have many parish duties, for our old Rector 
has neither wife or daughter, and there are so 
many parish calls that need a woman’s heart, 
and hands to answer. 

Curtains of deep crimson, somewhat faded, 
and in places almost threadbare, are loosely 
drawn from before the door-way, and as they 
gently sway in the s.oft air of the spring and 
summer days, they 

“ Cast over arch and roof a crimson glow, 

But ne’ertheless all is silence and all shade, 
.... Save only for the rippling flow 
Of their long foldings, when the sweet air 
Sighs through the casements of the house of 
prayer.” 

Back of the church are old ruins, much ivy 
draped, and fast crumbling away, yet among 
them, there still remain some walls of the 
conventual church, which was dedicated to 
Saint Gregory, with at the east end, lancet- 
shaped windows, coeval with the foundation. 

Graves are clustered about the churchyard 
almost as close together as primroses in the 
hedge-rows, some marked by ancient head- 


OUR SAINTS . 


19 

stones, on which the records are much time- 
defaced and hidden by the gray clinging moss, 
that belongs to graveyard stones. — Other 
marble slabs glow white and clear in the sun- 
shine, and moonlight, every letter on them 
easy to read. — And the flowers that grow on 
the ancient mounds, and the recent, are as 
unlike, as old sorrow and .new. 

But, does real sorrow ever grow old ? 

The old mounds are covered with thick 
growths of tbe deep glossy leaves of the blue- 
eyed periwinkle, while the more recent, are 
Lent-lily, and rose planted, and fresh flowers 
strewn from April to December. 

To one with courage and strength to climb 
the steep hill, eastward of the village, there 
awaits a rich reward whatever the season, so 
varied and beautiful are the wide outlooks on 
every side. 

In truth, no other county in old England 
can rival I think our Devonshire in pictur- 
esque and romantic views, antiquarian re- 
mains, and geological riches, as well as in 
extreme diversity of general scenery. The 


20 


OUR SAINTS. 


central part of the western district extending 
as it does, from the vale of Exeter to the 
banks of the Tamar, chiefly consists of barren 
and uncultivated Dartmoor, a region wild and 
dreary, made up of lofty hills, craggy rocks, 
and narrow valleys strewn with great masses 
of granite, that seem to have fallen in some 
wild struggle of nature from the surrounding 
heights. — Such a contrast to the vale of 
Exeter, bounded as it is, by a range of undu- 
lating hills, and the mountainous ridge of 
Blackdown. 

“ The garden of Devonshire ” is my favorite 
section of the county, — a garden walled in 
with goodly protective barriers, Dartmoor 
and the heights of Chudleigh on the north, the 
river Plym and Plymouth Sound on the west, 
Torbay on the east, and southward, by the 
blue waters of the Channel, that broad path- 
way, that leads to the open sea. As children 
and young folk, we brothers and sisters need- 
ed no longer journeys in search of adventure, 
change of air, or the expansion of mind vari- 
ety of scene gives, than our own county 


OUR SAINTS. 


21 


afforded, and my brothers, while still growing 
lads, knew Dartmoor forest, and were as 
familiar, at least by name, with the many and 
entensive deer parks, the rivers, and their 
tributary streams, and the legends of the 
coast, as they were with their best conned 
lessons. 

As for us sisters, even as children we could 
count the most beautiful of the beautiful 
prospects with which the county abounded, 
with as much ease, as we repeated the multi- 
plication table, while our interest in the “ Val- 
ley of Stones ” was unfailing, and as we grew 
older, there was the deeper interest of the 
Cathedral, and the ruins of Rougemount 
Castle in Exeter, as well as the remains of 
numerous abbeys, and churches, with their 
manifold traces of Ecclesiastical architecture. 
The castles and the ancient mansions were 
always full, too, of romance, while the Dru- 
idical or Celtic remains on Dartmoor, and 
in other parts of the county, seemed voiceful 
with weird strange echoes of mystical signifi- 
cance, from the long bygone years. 


22 


OUR SAINTS. 


It was by these comparatively near home 
associations, that our mother sought to ex- 
pand our opening minds, and she often said, 
when we returned from some excursion that 
perchance had extended over days, — every 
one now an amulet in memory, — that we 
came back from every new glimpse of God’s 
wondrous creation, and man’s courageous 
work, like diamonds that sparkled with bright- 
er lustre for every new sun-ray they caught. 

As for home itself, there was education in 
a certain way in every nook and corner of it, 
for the Hall is a quaint old-time building, — 
and like so many English mansions, — with a 
central tower, and long low wings extending 
on either side. 

The red brick of the massive walls of the 
northern wing is almost hidden by ivy, — while 
vines that love the sunshine creep up and 
twine about the gable windows, and overhang- 
ing eaves of the southern end, which bows out 
on the lower floor toward the lawn, and is en- 
circled by a broad veranda, that in summer 
time is like a bower-room, it is so shut in by 


OUR SAINTS. 


23 

climbing roses, flowering honeysuckle, and 
sweet briar. 

ir 

As for the tower, some by-gone ancestor, 
who had wearied of the red brick walls, had 
caused it to be stuccoed, and though to my 
taste, the warm glow of the original color, 
best suited the old structure, the sombre 
tint of gray caught through the thick glossy 
leaves of the close-clinging ivy, gave perchance 
a still more venerable look. 

A broad flight of steps leads to the portico, 
which opens straightway into the vast hall, 
where in winter, from Christmas eve on to 
twelfth night,* the ruddy gleam of the yule- 
log burning with a steady flame in the wide 
operi-hearted fireplace, throws a mystic charm 
of mingled light and shadow, over the old 
portraits, curiously wrought tapestry, and 
blazing shields and armor, with which the 
walls are hung. 

All the principal apartments open from the 
hall, though they are not many, neither are 
they remarkable for size, but every one is 
adorned with some rare work of art, and in 


OUR SAINTS. 


24 

arrangement, even to this day, reveal the ex- 
quisite taste my mother possessed, combined 
with her quick appreciation and value of every 
relic of the past, that holds a deeper meaning 
than mere age, — though that is a touchstone, 
I always think, to thought-laden backward- 
looks, and forward, too, for that matter. 

The dining-room is wainscoted, and over the 
fireplace, and in the four corners of the room, 
are shelved niches, well filled with treasures 
of old china, and rare specimens of what we 

moderns call, u bric-a-brac.” This room 

commands from its windows finer views than 
any apartment on the lower floor. 

The library, brother Francis’ special room, 
is opposite, and though comparatively small, 
it contains a well-chosen supply of books, and 
huge portfolios of companion prints, that 
serve to illustrate the volumes of history, art, 
or travel. 

My nook opens from the library, and is in 
fact little more than a projecting bay, that my 
mother had curtained off, and where by her 
planning, in place of the diamond lattice, a 


OUR SAINTS. 


25 

single pane of glass was inserted ; through 
which a beautiful outlook is caught, and no 
sooner caught than reflected in an opposite 
mirror. 

It is a sort of wonder-land glimpse, over- 
arched by mingled and harmonious color, in 
which the tinting of beech and yew, blend 
with clear-toned greens of maple and elm, 
and the feathery, misty foliage of laburnum 
and acacia, with rugged stately boughs of 
cedar and oak, — those great trees, that count 
a century but as a day. 

A glen-like terrace opens out below the 
leafy arch, at the far end of which, as though 
framed by a mosaic of leaf and twig, is an al- 
pine-like, wild, picturesque glimpse of nature. 

It is at the boundary of the park, and to- 
ward the part of the grounds that we always 
call our miniature Switzerland, — for just there, 
the banks of the Tamar are wild and rugged ; 
and the woods that fringe the park are as- 
cended by a zigzag climb, that leads to a tiny 
rustic lodge, a veritable Swiss cottage, with 
exterior staircase, and gallery leading to the 


26 


OUR SAINTS. 


one upper room ; from which you can see far 
down the river, and across the marsh meadows, 
over to the hills beyond. 

The cottage was built when we were chil- 
dren, as a surprise for Zita, — she so loved 
rural scenes and rural life, — and it is furnished 
too, k la Suisse, with wooden inlaid chairs and 
table, and supplied with horn spoons, and 
cups, wooden plates, and platters, and has 
been the scene of many a joyous feast, on 
holiday and festival. 

But, if its near surroundings are Swiss-like, 
the meadows across the river are thoroughly 
English in their suggestions. 

The dear meadows, that are all aglow now 
in the spring-time with marsh marigolds, the 
flower 

“That shines like fire, in swamps, and hollows gray,” 
while, 

“ By the meadow trenches bloom faint sweet cuckoo- 
flowers.” 

the “ lady smock all silver white wavy reeds, 
wild grasses, and osiers grow there too. All 


OUR SAINTS. 


2 7 

of them seeming at this season, hints of the 
blooms out on the hill-sides, lanes, and field- 
paths, — the cowslips and the crowfoot, prim- 
roses and daisies, and the many and dear 
flowers of rural England, that are nodding 
and peeping out from every hedge-row and 
nook where a bud or a blossom can find space 
to smile up toward the blue of the sky, or the 
overhanging green of tree and shrub. 


III. 


E VER since I can remember, I have had 
a fancy for beginning any new under- 
taking in the spring-time ; thus I am especially 
glad that brother Francis wished me to begin 
this history at this season ; and that yesterday, 
when we talked it over, was one of those per- 
fect days, when all nature seemed pulsing with 
a hymn of praise, that rivalled the. birds, that 
were wooing and wedding among the green- 
tipped branches of the old trees out in the 
park. 

As well they might be, for it was “ cuckoo 
day,” the fifteenth of April. 

Ah, how they sang, the livelong hours 
through ; first the larks, heralding the morning 
as they floated sky-ward on their russet pin- 
ions ; while the gray-linnets chose noon-time 
for their special carol-hour ; and the thrushes 

and the blackbirds, the robins and the meekly- 
(28) 


OUR SAINTS. 


2 9 

chirping sparrows, kept up a perpetual festival 
of song all the time ; — a song chorused by the 
many, many songsters of old England, with a 
melody that was sweetest and most music- 
full as the day waned ; for then it held the 
tender note of the evening song, and held too, 
as a prayer holds an amen, the first faint note 
of a nightingale, the June bird, that by mis- 
take breathed a song in April, like Mrs. 
Browning’s white rose, not waiting for the 
summer. 

Do you remember? 

“ For if I wait,” said she, 

“ Till time for roses be, — 

For the musk-rose and the moss-rose. 
Royal-red and maiden-blush-rose, — 

" What glory then for me 
In such a company ? 

Roses plenty, roses plenty, 

And one nightingale for twenty ? 


Nay let me in,” said she. 
Before the rest are free. — 


30 


OUR SAINTS. 


“ For I would lonely stand, 

Uplifting my white hand, — 

On a mission, on a mission, 

To declare the coming vision.” 

Like our nightingale I repeat, who by that 
one delicate note, a mere tracery of song, 
brought before us like a vision, the glory, and 
the beauty of summer, — only a vision, for it 
was a song note that lasted but for a moment, 
and then was merged and lost in the univer- 
sal, complex, and yet care-free bird melody. 

Yes, care -free, that is the very joy of bird 
songs to me, for, 

“ No Future taunts them with its fears or hopes. 

No cares their Present fret ; 

The Past for them no dismal vista opes 
Of useless, dark regret. 

“ Below, Earth blooms for them ; and above 
Heaven smiles in boundless blue ; 

Joy is in all things, and the song of Love 
Thrills* their whole being through. 

“ Ah ! we who boast we are the crown of things, 
Like them are never glad ; 

By doubts and dreams and dark self-questionings 
We stand besieged and sad. 


OUR SAINTS. 


31 


“ What know we of that rare felicity 
The unconscious birdling knows ; 

That no misgiving spoils ; that frank and free 
From merely living grows.” 

Thinking thus of the birds, one can readily 
believe the legend of the old monk of Heister- 
bach, to whom as he listened to the song of a 
forest warbler, a hundred years appeared as 
one day. 

So many memories, that have long been 
silent, wake up and become voiceful, as I 
begin to pen this family record, I find myself 
well-nigh bewildered as to how to arrange it. 

The truth is, while a family history is verily 
like a bit of tapestry, a thing woven of many 
colors, yet as every color has its own special 
tint, so every brother and sister in our band 
of eight, even from earliest infancy, had as 
distinctly marked an individuality, as Jacob’s 
sons in the Bible story. 

I wonder, were those brothers thus por- 
trayed as characteristically so totally unlike 
each other, that parents, all through the ages, 
might be comforted, when they find faults in 


OUR SAINTS. 


32 

one child, not in another; though both are 
trained in the same home school, and guarded 
and prayed for by the same parental hearts of 
love? 

I expressed something of this to Francis 
yesterday, as I appealed to him for advice, as 
to how I could tell the story of our eight in- 
dividual lives, if I interblended them in one 
commingled record. 

And by his counsel, I decide to divide my 
recital into eight parts, just as God has divided 
our lives, giving us each a soul, and a body, 
as unlike each other, as flowers are unlike one 
another in form and hue. 

Flowers, that are so typical of these souls 
of ours, because like them they come straight 
from the hand of God. 

I will be greatly aided in my task by a folio 
of closely-written pages, marked, “ Reminis- 
cences of my Children,” that I found not long 
ago in the topmost drawer of my mother’s 
ebony cabinet ; and from which I shall copy 
extracts, as they contain brief outline histories 
that are like pictures in suggestion, not only 


OUR SAINTS . 


33 


of our early, but later years too, as my mother 
kept these records up to a recent date, and 
she lived to see what mothers are wont 
to call the future of their children ; for last 
midsummer, when God called her, Francis was 
over fifty, and Britta, our little Britta, well on 
in the thirties — and yet, we were all children 
still to our mother. 

It is such a tender truth that one can never 
grow old to a mother, — never, even though a 
mother become like a child to son or daughter ; 
even though the hand that guided the uncer- 
tain steps of childhood clings at last for sup- - 
port, in the weakening days of age, to the 
child-hand ; that has grown strong and firm 
in its clasp with the coming and going of the 
years, — yet, — count they ever so many, those 
years, a child, is still a child, to a parent’s 
heart ! 


3 


IV. 


"OEFORE copying a word from my 
mother’s reminiscences, I must pause 
to tell that my father was an officer in the 
army. 

A true soldier, not only for the glory and 
honor of his native land, but a commander, too, 
in that battle-field where it is hardest to win 
victory, — his own heart, — because as our 
mother always told us, in the conflict he 
waged there, he never fought in his own 
strength. 

I remember as though it were but a yester- 
day by-gone, the gloomy March day, when in 
the gloaming, our mother called us about her, 
and told us we were fatherless. 

It was not a long story, — and, alas! so com- 
monplace, for many another brave soldier’s 
wife and children wept that day all the land 
over ; for the victory for which a nation re- 
( 34 ) 


OUR SAINTS. 


35 

joiced, was won at so costly a price to En- 
gland’s sons and daughters ! 

Not one of the many pictures that have 
looked down on me from the familiar home 
walls all the days of my life, is more real to 
me than the picture memory holds of that 
hour. 

We were in the library, all grouped about 
the low-burning embers . on the hearth, for it 
had been a chill March day. Rain was falling, 
and every passing gust of wind sent a shower 
of drops pattering against the window pane, 
with a dreary sound, that was only a prelude 
to the after moan of the wind, as it sighed 
around the eaves and corners of the old Hall. 

A light was burning on the centre-table, 
but its rays were dim, as though it, and the 
waning day, were at strife ; the one refusing to 
yield to the other’s sway. 

My mother sat on her low chair, — so 
changed, — that dear little mother, from the 
mother of yesterday ; truly it was as though 
in a moment, the shadow which we call eclipse, 
had passed before the light and sunshine of 


36 OUR SAINTS. 

her life, and left all darkness, and yet, — 

even in that supreme hour of anguish our 
mother murmured, 

“ His will be done, 

Who seeth not as we see, whose way 
Is not as ours ! ” 

But I will not linger over that scene, — 
enough, the sorrow had come, — the shadow 
had fallen, and this I understood, though I 
was then too young to fully comprehend the 
changes my father’s death brought into our 
home and lives. 

I only knew we all felt from the oldest to 
the youngest of us, that after it, life meant 
more in earnestness than it had ever done be- 
fore. — 

And if this feeling through our mother’s 
influence was clothed in something of meta- 
phor; if it made our daily life something of a 
living allegoiy r , I never have felt regret that it 
was so ; or that it came from the fact, that my 
mother had, as I have said before, many 
quaint fancies and customs, that blossomed 


OUR SAINTS. 


37 

out from the associations of her early home, 
like roses, making the oftentime discipline 
they involved, sweet and fragrant, as the rose 
makes the thorn-set stem. 

Chief among these fancies was the naming 
of her children ; and that hour, when we sat 
in the gloom and the awe of great sorrow, she 
told us why she had chosen to call us after 
saints of old. 

And, as she told, grief more than once in- 
terrupted her words, — more than once, she 
spoke only by tears ; so inwoven with memo- 
ries of my father, were the thoughts that were 
linked with our naming. 

Francis held my mother's right hand as she 
spoke, and she bowed her head on his shoulder 
as he knelt by her side. 

Only a brief fortnight before, Francis had 
celebrated his nineteenth birthday, and then 
all the future had been bright as a pleasant 
dream to him, seeming like a meadow of wav- 
ing grain, over which sunlight played, and 
which stood strong and fair, waiting for his 
young hand to reap the full harvest that he 


38 OUR SAINTS. 

thought would be his by right of inheritance , 
but that lay now bruised and beaten before 
the storm of adversity. 

For though I did not know it till long 
afterward, by my father’s death Francis’ 
prospects and plans for life were all changed. 

The facts were, my father’s claim to the 
Glentwood estate was involved by one con- 
dition, and that was the existence of an heir, 
to whom, by the right of will, the broad acres 
and ancestral Hall were to pass if he survived 
father. 

But as cousin Reginald, the heir, was a 
man much older than my father in years, — 
though younger in lineal descent, — and in ex- 
tremely delicate health too, my parents had 
naturally come to feel that father would sur- 
vive him, and thus Francis become the legal 
heir and future head of the house; and Fran- 
cis had perchance, unconsciously to them and 
to himself, grown up to share this feeling, as 
well as to take more of an oversight and in- 
terest in the details of the estate than most 
lads of his age would have done. An interest 


OUR SAINTS. 


39 

which was augmented because my father’s 
profession involved his frequent and long 
absence from home. 

But I repeat, on my father’s death all was 
changed, and cousin Reginald, — as true and 
noble-hearted a man as ever lived, — straight- 
way became master, with something more of 
actual ownership even than father had pos- 
sessed ; for his claim was not a mere life tenure, 
as my father’s had been, as he inherited the 
light to will the estate to whom he pleased. 

Dear cousin Reginald, he would not hear of 
our leaving the Hall, but immediately he 
made it over to my mother, and us brothers 
and sisters, as a home to be jointly owned by 
us all, as long as we lived, — and his gift in- 
cluded the near park, garden, and pasture 
meadows eastward of the Hall. 

Thus, as far as we younger children were 
concerned, we did not note or feel our 
altered condition ; but to my mother, the 
grown lads, Zita and Eulalie, too, the sudden 
loss of the ample revenue derived from the 
outlying farms, village tenantry, and vast 


OUR SAINTS. 


40 

tracts of woodland, caused many a care and 
perplexity, and made early and independent 
effort for self-support necessary, on the part of 
my brothers at least. 

It necessitated, too, Francis giving up en- 
tering Oxford, for a year, till my mother had 
time to plan and arrange, and Hughes leaving 
Eton for the same time. 

For mother’s chief revenue was limited to 
the income derived from my father’s pension, 
and her own wedding dowry, and barely suffi- 
cient to meet daily needs, at least till she had 
learned the secret of making little suffice for 
the plenty, she had been used to. 

But she was a brave little woman, and 
never lost heart or courage, whatever the 
difficulties that surrounded her. 

We children were as happy as birds over 
some of the new arrangements, certainly over 
the departure of resident tutor and governess. 
Our rector, Mr. Saunders, undertaking to teach 
the brothers, and mother instructing us girls. 

There were other changes too, and I can 
well remember how one familiar face after an- 


OUR SAINTS. 


41 

other vanished from among the servants, till 
at last, only Andrew the coachman, and Smith 
the gardener, with Peter the groom, were left 
of the men ; while cook, nurse Bland, Nannette 
my mother’s maid, and Andrew’s daughter 
Jane, were the only women. My mother too 
only retained the carriage horses, and Waxy 
the pony, and they were all we really needed. 
Though child that I was, I can remember 
how Zita wept, when Lady Blanche, the 
white mare, was led away to a new home, and 
old General, my father’s favorite roadster, be- 
came the property of ’Squire Allen. 


HILE Francis had been the one to hold 



my mother’s right hand the eventide 


that followed the coming of the knowledge of 
my father’s death, it was Hugh that clasped 
her left, — that little lonely hand, where the 
shining circlet of gold shone in the dim light. 

My mother’s wedding ring! it grew so 

slender, so worn before she died, but it 

always shone with a golden gleam, and 

when she went from us, we left it still on her 
dear finger, just where my father had placed 
it years and years before, — the mute type of 
an un-ending love, — the circlet, that never was 
broken through all those years. 

In our family band Hugh was next in age 
to Francis, and never were two brothers more 
unlike. Francis all gentleness, always com- 
posed in manner, calm and scholarly, moder- 


(42) 


OUR SAINTS. 


43 

ate in decision, but nevertheless firm as a 
rock when decided. A tall, slender lad, rud- 
dy of countenance, but yet with a certain 
delicacy, that hinted even in youth, the in- 
valid years he has since known. 

Hugh was stalwart and strong as a young 
oak from babyhood, and possessed of a nature 
impetuous as a mountain torrent, but with a 
heart as clear from guile as the sparkling water 
of clearest cascade, yet spite this, he was wild as 
a young colt. A lad who needed much hold- 
ing in by bit and bridle, and my little moth- 
er's hands, they were so frail, so small for the 
task. 

But, what her hands could not do, her dear 
heart did ; and though Hugh fell and stum- 
bled time after time on the race-course of life, 
where the battle is with right and wrong ; 
though he sometimes well-nigh snapped asun- 
der both bit and bridle, he never broke quite 
loose from the controlling love and restraining 
prayers of his mother, to whom he was dear 
as the very echo of her own heart-beat, — dear 
as her life. 


44 


OUR SAINTS. 


From the time he was a laughing baby boy, 
nurse Bland once told me, mother had been 
wont to call Hugh her “ child of benediction,” 
he was always so joyous and glad of heart. 

She had a thought, too, I suppose, of the old- 
time Saint Hugh — in memory of whom she 
had named him, — and whom in a subtle way 
he resembled, certainly in bodily presence ; he 
was of such rare beauty, so tall and comely ; 
in spirit, too, I think, only the growth and 
likeness of a spirit, which we know in the fa- 
miliar intercourse of family life, it is sometimes 
harder to recognize than an outer resem- 
blance. 

Hence sometimes, when I have recalled the 
many hours of anxiety Hugh cost mother, I 
have wondered, at those words, “ My child of 
benediction,” — wondered, why she chose them 

for him. — Yet, what is a benediction? the 

Dictionary says a blessing, — and after all, are 
not our greatest blessings wont to be the 
things that cost us most ? 

Next to these brothers came Zita, a girl 
of fifteen when our father died, but seeming 


OUR SAINTS. 


45 

older; she had been so much of a companion 
to mother all her life, and by nature she was 
endowed with great mental power, combined 
with enthusiasm of temperament, that had 
led her on to studies and thoughts that usu- 
ally belong to mature age. 

Beauty too had been like an inspiration to 
her from childhood, music and art, poetry — 
silent as nature’s, or voiceful as poets’ — was as 
life-laden to her at the air she breathed. 

After Zita came Eulalie, only a year and 
a month’s difference in their ages. — 

Eulalie is more like my mother than any of 
us, there has always been such a wondrous 
charm about her, a something ever in reserve, 
reminding one of a translucent casket, that 
but half reveals, and yet only half conceals 
the sparkling gems within. 

Even to this day there is a look in her deep 
dark eyes, as though she saw far-off things ; 
as though she heard “ the butterflies,” and 

“ What they say betwixt their wings, 

Or in stillest evenings, 

With what voice the violet wooes 
To his heart the silver dews. 


46 


OUR SAINTS. 


Or when little airs arise 
How the merry bluebell rings 
To the mosses underneath.” 

. Yes, I always feel as though my sister Eu- 
lalie had come nearer the “ great soul of the 
world,” than we others have. 

Divided from Eulalie by a bridge of time 
that spanned full two years, is the place filled 
by Herbert and myself, twins in heart, as well 
as age. 

And then comes Yvo — my mother’s mid- 
summer child. 

And last of all little Britta, who all her life 
long has been like a bird, blessing us by her 
gladness of heart ; like a star, shining for us 
when days have been darkest, and trials heav- 
iest. 

For we Glentwoods of Glentwood Hall have 
had our share of dark days, and trial hours. 


VI. 



OOKING over the first pages of the pa- 


^ pers found in my mother’s cabinet, and 
selecting the extracts I propose to copy, 
makes me feel something like an artist, who 
turns away from the full light of mid-day, or 
the deepening shadows of twilight, to catch 
and hold on the receptive canvas, the glow 
and the brightness of the rosy-tinted clouds 
that cluster about the horizon at sunrise of a 
summer day ; for they tell, not only of the 
dawning of the lives of her children, but of 
the morning of her own life, too. 

The first date is just before Francis’ birth. 
I make a brief extract from it, as it serves to 
unfold her nature better than my descriptive 
words can. She writes : 

I was brought up in the faith of the 
Romish Church, but I want to express that 


( 47 ) 


48 OUR SAINTS. 

it was truly the Catholic Church, in the full 
comprehensiveness of the word, and while my 
parents, as well as Father St. Claire — our par- 
ish priest — were firm believers in infallibility, 
it was the infallibility of Truth . 

I think they knew and appreciated the 
errors, the superstitions, and false dogmas 
which had crept into their Church, with the 
lapse of years, and held souls in bondage, as 
keenly as ever the most devout Protestant 
mourned them. 

Father St. Claire’s teachings, so far as I 
was concerned, had nothing to do with con- 
troversial subjects, and they may well be 
summed up in a code of love ; so often the 
gentle, kindly old man used to say to me, 
“ Child, 1 when you have nothing else to be- 
stow, remember, you can always give love.’ ” 

And love comprised to him the abiding 
Faith, Hope, and Charity; those three pre- 
cious stepping-stones to the cross, as he used 
to call them ; each a step upward, a step higher 
than the preceding, — and to the child, — thus 
that old village priest taught, — as well as to 


OUR SAINTS. 


49 

the man, up higher , must ever mean ascend- 
ing by the putting down of evil. 

Yes, it is an upward climb all the way from 
childhood to age, for, 

“ Our little lives are kept in equipoise 
By struggles of two opposite desires ; 

The struggle of the instinct that enjoys, 

And the more noble instinct that aspires/’ 

It was Father St. Claire, too, who made me 
familiar, by converse and reading, with the in- 
spiring sentiments of such men as A’Kempis, 
Augustine, and Fenelon, and many another 
father in the faith ; and it was he who taught 
me the lofty uplifting hymns of praise, that 
had found utterance in by-gone ages in the 
hearts of holy men ; and that will be dear 
through all time to the longing, aspiring hearts 
of Christ’s followers. 

When I came to this English home, my 
husband’s friends questioned me as to my 
creed ; and they looked with something of 
doubt on the faith of one reared in Catholic 
France ; but they queried no longer when I 
repeated the faith-creed Father St. Claire had 
4 


50 OUR SAINTS. 

translated from an old Latin manuscript, and 
given me the day of my first communion. 


“ As on fair wings 
The dove upsprings, 

So to the soul is given, 
Beside the cross 
Through pain and loss, 
Swiftly to fly toward heaven. 
The cross, where died 
The Crucified, 

Is now our refuge sure ; 

His wounds displayed. 

The debt is paid, 

Our pardon is secure. 

V By wounds most sweet, 

In hands and feet, 

By blood that flowed for me. 
By death of scorn, 

Thou once hast borne, 

Let me Thy soldier be ! 

In Thy dear heart 
There be my part ; 

While here I strive opprest ; 
As timid dove, 

Mourning its love, 

Flees to the rock for rest. 

“ Sweet spot to hide ! 

May I abide 
Safe here forevermore ; 


OUR SAINTS. 


51 


Here in youth rest, 

In age be blest. 

Linger till life is o’er ; 

And then may I 
Heavenward fly, 

Partaker of full bliss ; 

Who from Thy side. 

Thou Crucified, 

Have not withdrawn in this.” 

Like many another monk, Father St. Claire 
was something of an artist, and never weary 
of illuminating missal and sacred page, with 
emblem and device. 

Sometimes, too, he essayed a bit of coarser 
work ; and to show the liberal mind of the 
man, it was he, who, in letters of gold, tender 
red, and heavenly blue, painted on the oaken 
panel over the entrance door of the Chateau, 
words that when I came to this English Hall, 
my husband ordered painted on the panel 
that surmounts the tiles, — all Scripture scenes, 
— that are set around our library chimney- 
place. 

I hope they will indeed be the motto of 
our home. 


52 


OUR SAIN 7" S. 


“ In essentials unity ; 

In non-essentials liberty ! 

In all things, charity.” 

Just here, I should say, that Father St. 
Claire was my tutor, as well as spiritual 
guide, and as we conned the pages of early 
history, he directed me, too, to many of the 
touching records of the early Christians ; the 
saints and martyrs, who believed the true 
spirit of a saint was the learning and the liv- 
ing of the Christ-taught doctrine, not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister ; the learning 
that the being lowly in heart, pure in thought, 
true in deed, steadfast in principle, were things 
demanding the conquering of the spirit, and 
not the mortification of the body. 

This memory of Father St. Claire’s inter- 
pretation of what a saint-like life means, leads 
me to determine, that if God ever sends into 
our home little children, I will call them after 
old saints, and pray that as I thus choose their 
names, the Spirit of divine love may help me 
to train them to be lowly in heart, like the 
good men and women for whom I call them. 


OUR SAINTS. 


53 

So well I recall Father St. Claire’s once 
saying, “ Remember the most highly blessed 
of God among the children of men are the 
humble,” and he sealed the words on my 
memory by linking them with the old legend 
that runs : 

u Before the Lord revealed Himself to 
Moses on Mount Sinai, He told all the mount- 
ains that He purposed speaking to His elect 
servant on one of them. —And straightway 
all began to strain and stretch themselves, 
that they might seem high and worthy of the 
honor; Zion alone, — the mountain on which 
Jerusalem stands, — bowed and was humble. — 
To reward its humility the Lord commanded 
that all the other mountains should give of 
their trees, and plants, to grace and deck 
it.” 

A legend cemented by the “ striking pecu- 
liarity, that Palestine, the spot chosen by God 
for His revelation of religious truth to our 
race, and for the incarnation of the Saviour 
of mankind, presents within its narrow bounds 
the characteristics of climate and produc- 


OUR SAINTS. 


54 

tions scattered elsewhere over all the habit- 
able zones, — from the snowy north to the 
tropics.” 

It was nearing the end of the day when 
Father St. Claire repeated this legend to me, 
and only a few short weeks before I left the 
Chateau home. We were looking off toward 
the ridge of hills to the northward of our 
boundary, tracing their dim forms through the 
here and there openings of the tree-boughs. 

So well I loved those deep, restful glimpses 
of their blue and purple-tinted heights; es- 
pecially when seen amid the folded mists, that 
were wont to be their gossamer-like covering 
well-nigh every night of early spring and 
summer, and that began to gather an hour or 
so before the gloaming, and when the harsher 
days of autumn and winter came, a heavier 
mist falling — or up-rising? 

The dew falls from heaven, — and the mist 
uprises from earth, — there is such a deep spir- 
itual truth hidden in their difference, just as 
there is in the angels ascending and descend- 
ing Jacob’s ladder. 


OUR SAINTS. 




55 


But, — we must be careful as we seek it, 
“ not to let the angels obscure the ladder it- 
self, or rather Him, whom the ladder symbol- 
izes.” 


VII. 

I CONTINUE to copy from my mother’s 
journal, and I will cull, and put together, — 
though they are widely separated in her 
record, — the first words she wrote after the 
birth of each of her children. — And then, I 
will straightway leave our babyhood, and take 
up my narrative again, returning to the time 
immediately following my father’s death. 

EXTRACTS. 

It was a Sabbath morning when our Francis, 
my first-born, came to us, verily a gift from 
God. 

October was the month. — For me the crown 
month of the twelve, for my wedding day had 
been in October only the year by-gone. 

Little Francis is a child pleasant to behold 
even now in early infancy, with earnest lov- 
( 56 ) 


OUR SAINTS. 


5 7 

ing eyes, out of which the soul of the little 
stranger looks with something of wistful long- 
ing. 

Will he ever attain that for which his baby 
soul yearns? and, — what is it? 

Thus my mother-heart asks, — but no voice 
sounds from the future to tell me, — and yet, 
I know many a struggle awaits my child in 
the warfare of life. 

Spite this knowledge, this baby look of 
aspiration is beautiful to me as a hope ; verily 
seeming like the first of the hues of the bow 
of promise, that I pray may span my boy’s 
future, till the perfect arch is complete at last. 

May I not go beyond hope, and believe that 
it will, for is not “ every inmost aspiration 
God’s angel undefiled ? ” — And it is written, 
“ their angels do always behold the face of 
the Father,” — surely then, that look is the 
reflection of angel guidance. 

I think it is this gaze of earnestness in my 
baby’s eyes, that decides me to call him by 
the name of Saint Francis of Spain ; the story 
of whose holy and scholarly life has always 


5 8 OUR SAINTS. 

been dear to me, combined as it was with 
such mildness of disposition, and yet such 
staunch adherence to the right. 

On my own christening day my parents 
gave me a gem-set ring, that I have worn 
ever since my finger was large enough, and I 
never gaze on it, without a consciousness of 
the motto they linked with it as I passed out 
of childhood. 

Now I plan following this old French cus- 
tom, and choosing for Francis a gem, with a 
meaning, and giving it to him on his chris- 
tening day, — a custom I will continue if God 
sends more children into our home. 

Deciding to do this, I sat in the twilight 
last night pondering what jewel stone to 
choose, when suddenly my attention was 
caught by the low lullaby nurse Bland was 
singing to my baby boy, and in its simple 
rhyme, I found an answer to my pondering. 

The words were doleful indeed for a “ sleep, 
-baby, sleep ” song, strange words too, for a 
cheerful-hearted woman like nurse Bland to 
hum. 


OUR SAINTS. 


59 


“ October’s child is born for woe, 

And life’s vicissitudes must know. 

But lay an opal on its breast, 

And hope will lull the woes to rest.” 

As she repeated the lines in a slower and 
lower cadence, I straightway remembered, 
according to the gem calendar, the opal, the 
stone of hope, belongs to October, and so I 
choose it for Francis ; for I think in these lives 
of ours, we may find types in everything. 

Another little voice has come to make 
music in our home; another baby son. Hugh, 
our second born ; come with the spring, the 
dear little lad that is so strong of limb, and 
yet a baby who nestles so close to his moth- 
er’s heart ; who meets my every look with an 
answering gaze of love. 

Somehow I do not question and wonder 
about little Hugh’s future as I did when 
Francis came, and yet, baby that he is, already 
I can see he is strong of will, — quick of temper; 
a child who as he grows into boyhood will 
perchance often make his mother’s heart ache, 


6o 


OUR SAINTS. 


but with such love in his gaze, I think he will 
always heed my words. 

Blessings on the darling, I hear him cooing 
and laughing even as I write, though his baby 
life spans but six brief months, — my joyous 
child ; so brave of heart too, I know, why he 
stretches out his little arms with never a fear 
to strangers and friends alike ; and when I 
take him with nurse, held safe in her strong 
arms, as we drive through the long village 
street, where the cottagers gather about the 
low pony carriage for a peep at his dark eyes 
and dimpled face, he smiles in response, not 
only on sweet rosy-cheeked children and fair 
maidens, but on the time-wrinkled faces of 
old people too. 

Well may nurse sing to him, March’s verse 
in her lullaby, 

“ Who on this world of ours their eyes 
In March first open, shall be wise, 

In days of peril firm and brave, 

And wear a blood-stone to their grave.” 

Well may I too choose March’s jewel, for 


OUR SAINTS . 


6 1 


his christening gem, with its significant mean- 
ing, — courage. I said I did not question 
of this child’s future ; did not peer into the 
dim unknown years, — and yet, — yet, for what 
will my boy need courage ? — 

Will he be tried like the Saint Hugh who 
from the cradle seemed to be what I call 
Hugh, a “ child of benediction,” and yet 
whose heart was tried, whose faith was tested, 
by the discipline of sharp pain ? — 

I am glad the years are silent, glad I hear 
no answer. 

We left England last autumn for a winter’s 
tarrying in this sunny land of Italy, and here, 
— where the skies are so blue, — here, within 
sight of the gleaming waters of the Arno, that 
flow far down in the valley, with a noiseless 
flow, silent as thought, as it seems to me, look- 
ing from the windows of our villa ; here, with- 
in sight of the steep heights of Fiesole, with 
its “crown of monastic walls and cypresses” ; 
here, within the shadow of the mighty dome, 
within sound of the bells of Florence ; in this 


62 


OUR SAINTS. 


city, wnere art and nature harmonize, God sent 
Zita to us. 

Like Hugh, she is a child of the spring, and 
with eyes dark as his, and a heart as tender, I 
think, — my April-born daughter, with a dia- 
mond for her gem, and 

“ This stone 

Emblem of innocence is known,” 
thus nursey sings. 

Before choosing a name for this little daugh- 
ter, I spent many an hour in looking over the 
histories of saintly women, with which the 
libraries in Florence abound ; and of all the 
records, the story of Saint Zita is to me the 
fullest of details, in which I would fain find an 
echo in my child’s life. 

For the old record tells, how this long-ago 
Zita was a tender-hearted child, with a mind 
naturally replete with religious thoughts and 
desires, and how, while still in early girlhood, 
she determined never to lose sight of God in 
her deeds; and thus as she grew older, her 
greatest happiness was in works of charity 


OUR SAINTS. 63 

and kindness, her heart being pervaded with 
that sweet spirit of love that excused the 
faults of others, while wide awake to her own, 
— one of those women 

“ Who never found fault with you, never implied 
You wrong, by her right, and yet men at her side, 
Grew nobler, girls purer, — and — children gladder.” 

A woman possessed of a 

“ Simple noble nature, credulous 
Of what she longed for, good in friend or foe.” 

This was the Zita for whom I named my Zita, 
and whom I pray she may resemble. 

Four little birdlings in our nest now, for 
Eulalie has come, — a winter-heralded child, a 
frail little creature, that came with December’s 
first snow-fall, a snow-drop in purity of heart ; 
I can see it in her baby face ; a child of quickly 
varying moods, too, that also I see ; and her 
eyes, though they are dark as my Zita’s, and 
large, almost too large for a baby face, have 
the same look in them that shone from Fran- 
cis’ blue orbs. 


6 4 


OUR SAINTS. 


Yes, a “ whole future” sometimes seems 
hidden in their depths, or rather gazing forth 
from the light in her baby soul. 

My husband smiled when I told him she 
was to be called Eulalie, but he did not say 
nay, and his smile grew tenderer as I repeated 
the old legend of Saint Eulalie, who came as 
our baby did, when the pure white snow was 
falling from the December’s sky ; falling in 
feathery flakes, like lily buds shaken from the 
clouds, but that as they reached the earth, 
were changed into the form of white doves, 
that went flocking and soaring upward 
again. 

Eulalie ! my little Eulalie, God grant she 
too may be pure as a lily, gentle as a dove, 
sweet in disposition as Saint Eulalie. I am 
glad the turquoise, blue as the sky, is the em- 
blem gem of her birth-month, glad nurse sings 
for her, 


If cold December gave you birth, 

The month of snow and ice and mirth, 
Place on your hand a turquoise blue, 
Success will bless whate’er you do.” 


OUR SAINTS. 55 

Glad, I repeat, that blue is her color ; I never 
can divest myself of the fancy that colors in 
a certain way are types of our lives, or char- 
acters, and that we each mystically represent 
the qualities of some special color. 

I suppose this feeling of mine is akin to that 
which leads some people to find an immediate 
suggestion of certain friends, in certain flow- 
ers. 

Blue, it is such a beautiful emblem of a wom- 
an’s heart and nature, according to tradition, 
the type of constancy ; and “ the color, too, of 
the atmosphere, when saturated with sun- 
shine.” 

I thought my heart and hands were as full 
as mother heart and hands could be ; but no, 
there is room, plenty and plenty, for the little 
strangers, Maud, “ star - sweet ” blue -eyed 
Maud ; and Herbert, the twin brother, as like 
to Maud in feature, as rose is like to rose, 
when both are fair and beautiful, as like in 
heart I believe, too, as two souls can be. 

Another birth to record, — my Yvo’s — dark- 
5 


66 


OUR SAINTS. 


eyed and strong of limb like Hugh ; Yvo, 
whom we name for that saint of Brittany, that 
man so tender of heart, that he was called the 
lover of the poor; so pitiful of suffering, that 
the sick were his care ; the oppressed his 
charge. 

Saint Yvo, who taught, 

“ Uphold the Christ, 

Ride abroad redressing human wrongs, 

Speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, 

Lead sweet lives in purest chastity.” 

This was the saint for whom we named our 
Yvo. 

It was Valentine’s day, the day of love and 
gladness, when God sent Bridget, our little 
Britta, with the blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and 
the laughing, dimpled mouth, — Britta our joy 
. now in her babyhood. 

Will she, as the years come, be like Ireland’s 
Saint Bridget, “our shining light,” because of 
her virtues ? 


OUR SAINTS. 67 

And will ‘darkness be needed to reveal the 
glow of that spiritual light? 

Foolish mother-heart, questioning still, — 
striving to look into the future and know its 
story for my eighth-born child, as I did for 
my first-born ! 


VIII. 


\ 


P ASSING over the years that intervene be- 
tween the records of our infancy and my 
father’s death, I resume, as I said I would, my 
tale at a date close following that dreary March 
day, which dawned for us, laden with the sad 
intelligence of our loss. 

And I turn to my mother’s journal again, 
for I find underlying and running through it, 
a golden thread of meaning, that gives a 
deeper significance to this simple story of a 
family, than I had thought to find when Fran- 
cis bade me write it out. 

What is this golden thread, do you ask? an 
echo, I reply, that he who listens may hear, 
if he hearkens in the spirit with which my 
mother interpreted the lives of her children ; 

and which filled her dear heart with a sweet 
( 68 ) 


OUR SAINTS. 


69 

assurance, that in a certain way we each pos- 
sessed some of the traits and characteristics of 
the men and women in memory of whom she 
named us, and that verily made us echoes of 
them ; though perchance it were in that some- 
what mystical way, in which the sea-shell 
holds in its faint musical murmur an echo of 
the sea. 

For remember, these men and women, were 
called saints in that highest use of the word 
when applied to men and women ; and that 
holds a liberty that is bounded by a spiritual 
outlook wide enough, because founded on the 
Rock of Ages, not to be afraid to meet the 
truth, “ that almost every great saint in the 
Bible is recorded to have fallen into sin,” — 
and, “ that mere untried virtue does not de- 
serve the name, neither can they be said to 
have a moral character that have not been 
tempted, that the struggle toward the good, 
that has been lost, is the source of all that is 
most noble.” 

Broad and tender enough too, to remember 
“ where sin abounded, grace did much more 


OUR SAINTS. 


7 o 

abound, — and His grace is sufficient, — made 
perfect in weakness.” 

Thus, though she knew as none other did 
our frailties and our faults, our wanderings 
and our doubtings, our falls and our failures, 
still our mother called us, echoes of the saints 
of old, because it was through the recognizing 
of the conflict of right with wrong, good with 
evil, that she discovered this saint-likeness in 
our poor weak human hearts. 

I seem to hear her dear voice now, saying, 
“ Remember, * many a time the greatest use of 
a good deed is the doing it/ ” — and when we 
failed, how often she encouraged us by the 
simple reminder, that if we had love in the 
soul, we need not be discouraged, even though 
good and evil seemed to grow in our hearts 
close together, as two flowers opening on the 
same stem. 

But when mother thus encouraged us, she 
always bade us recollect too, that though 
“ love is higher than duty, the reason is, that 
love in reality contained duty in itself. Love 
is duty, and something more. Love is a no- 




OUR SAINTS. ji 

ble tree of which duty is the trunk. Love is 
a beautiful plant, with a beautiful flower, of 
which duty is the stalk.” 

Just here I copy a chaplet of verses, that I 
think contain in very truth my mother’s idea, 
when she talked of saints in this world of 
ours, with the same freedom and sureness with 
which we talk of violets, as we tell the tale of 
garden blooms. 

“ A heartfelt smile, a gentle tone, 

A thoughtful word, a tender touch, 

A passing act of kindness done ; — 

Tis all, but it is much. 

“ The motions of a heart set free 
From all-absorbing, selfish care ; 

A sweet concern, that seems to me 
Like an unspoken prayer ; 

“ A look that reads the inmost heart, 

Yet not with scrutiny severe; 

Not as of one who sits apart. 

Nor knows our pain and fear ; 

“ These are not things to win applause; 

No earthly fame awaiteth such ; 

But surely by the heavenly laws 
They are accounted much ; 


7 2 


OUR SAINTS. 

“And they, who give without restraint 
Such gifts, and ask them not again, 
What is there in the name of Saint 
That they should not obtain ? ” 


And now, with no more lingering, I turn 
again to my mother’s journal. 


IX. 


EXTRACTS CONTINUED. 

S I pen these pages, I feel like a voyager, 



whose little barque sets sail across a 
wide, flowing river, that is spanned by a 
moonlit path of golden, spray-kissed waves, 
and yet, more than once broken by foam 
crests. 

But this is a metaphor that applies to my 
other children rather than to Francis. 

For in gathering together memories that 
cluster about his life at the time of which I 
now tell, I feel more like one standing on 
ocean shore, watching the tide come in, sure 
that at last it will creep up and cover project- 
ing rock and sandy beach, but yet wondering, 
why, while each wave gains a little, it straight- 
way, too, falls back into the ocean of waves 


( 73 ) 


OUR SAINTS. 


7 4 

and surging water, seeming verily a type of 
perpetual relapsing. 

Yes, like relapsing waves my Francis’ heart 
seemed then, — the soul of the youth, and 
young man, was so tried, so tossed about by 
question and doubt, disappointment and loss. 

The look of eager yearning I had seen in his 
baby eyes all came back, only the peace in 
the child’s gaze had gone from the youth’s, 
had changed to restlessness, because he was 
one of those of whom it has been well written : 

“ In seeking to undo 
One riddle, and to find the true, 

He knit a hundred others new. 

“ The end and the beginning vexed 
His reason ; many things perplexed 
With motions, checks, and counter-checks.” 

From childhood Francis had been a docile 
lad, scholarly and eager in his pursuit of 
knowledge, seldom showing more temper 
than a certain persistence, which hinted that 
under unfavorable influences he might possess 
something of obstinacy. 


OUR SAINTS. 


7 5 

There had never been anything of despond- 
ency in his moods ; on the contrary, I had 
thought him of a hopeful temperament, though 
he was always inclined to more of serious re- 
flection than the others of my group. 

Hence I was totally unprepared for the 
change that seemed to come over my boy’s 
nature, as suddenly as a thunder-cloud comes 
across the blue sky of a July day, and I was 
dim of faith then, — and so, as we are apt to 
do in nature’s storms, I forgot that the blue is 
always behind the storm-clouds, — forgot, and I 
think this added to the sorrow of that time, 
that back, or rather underlying the doubts 
and rebellion that held sway in Francis’ soul, 
were the principles that had been planted 
there from the days of babyhood, — forgot, that 
perchance he needed this sharp discipline to 
blow the chaff from the tender grain, to beat 
down the tares from among the slender seed- 
freighted stalks. 

Mothers so need to read and re-read that 
old parable of the seed and the sower, before 
they grasp the hidden comfort in the fact it 


76 OUR SAINTS. 

reveals, that growth may be going on even 
though we see it not. 

For it was not the seed which forthwith 
sprang up that at last bore the full grain in 
the ear. 

And, there is need to remember, too, espe- 
cially now, when thought is so broad of wing, 
its flight so boundless, the tender, deep, wis- 
dom-full lesson held in the old saying, “ There 
lives more faith in honest doubt, than in half 
the creeds.” 

But while careful to remember this, one 
must be mindful, too, to link it with the trutli 
that should ever be its companion, as the 
right hand is companion to the left ; and thus 
recollect, “ that spiritual things can not be 
discerned as material things are discerned, or 
judged as material things are judged. That 
which is the object of faith , can not be the 
object of reason, much less can it be sub- 
mitted to reason.” 


X. 

CONTINUED EXTRACTS. 

I T was no light thing to Francis to find 
himself no longer heir to the Glentwood 
estate, and yet this fact was clearly expressed 
in the terms of cousin Reginald’s gift of the 
Hall, and near grounds, jointly to myself and 
children for our life-time. 

Neither was it a light thing for a youth just 
on the threshold of manhood, to be brought 
suddenly face to face with the fact, that from 
the platform of affluent circumstances, he 
must step down, as it were, and henceforth in 
a great measure be dependent on self-support. 

I confess at first my mother-heart shrank 
back too from this truth, but how often since 
have I given thanks for the very adversity 
and perplexity that accompanied our reduced 

( 77 ) 


78 OUR SAINTS. 

income ; for surely it served to bring out and 
develop the true manhood of my sons, as 
prosperity hardly could have done. 

March had glided into April, and April 
sped into May, before the time came for me 
to explain to my children in detail our altered 
circumstances. 

And then, — because I can myself always 
bear trouble better when I am out in the sun- 
shine — I told the troop at breakfast-time of a 
cloudless, sunshiny morning, that the livelong 
day should be a holiday, and that we would 
spend it in the woods, among the flowers and 
the birds ; and spite the great shadow that 
had so recently fallen on our hearts and 
home, the young things, with the exception 
of Francis and Eulalie, were as gay as larks 
over my proposal. 

When we started, the younger ones ran 
before us as light of foot as young fawns, and 
as we went through the park by the woodland 
path, that leads down to the river bank, they 
were happy as sunbeams, and all through the 
morning, I never once checked their mirth 


OUR SAINTS. 


79 

and glee. Neither did I when, at high noon, 
we climbed the steep path leading up to Zita’s 
“ Switzerland,” and sought shelter in the 
rustic cottage, where kind nurse Bland, aided 
by Jane the maid, had spread a bountiful 
lunch for the older brothers and sisters, and 
the hungry little birdlings, that looked like 
spring flowers, or flower fairies ; for Britta was 
garlanded with cowslips, Maud crowned with 
golden-hued daffodils, Herbert and Yvo armed 
with meadow-grasses and reeds, tipped with 
daisies. 

I thought it best that even the youngest 
should hear what I had to tell, and so when 
the last bun was eaten, the last horn cup of 
snowy milk emptied, I bade nurse and Jane 
return to the Hall with the empty hampers, 
saying, I would come with the children later 
on. 

Then we left our high perch, and went 
down again to the river bank. 

As the day had lengthened, the sunshine 
had not waned, only grown softer, falling in 
golden bands aslant the bank-sides of the 


8o 


OUR SAINTS. 


river’s brink, — the river, in whose clear water 
the shadows of tree and overhanging bush 
were reflected as distinctly as a pure soul is 
reflected on a calm, holy face. 

All about was peaceful, the birds singing 
still, but songs in a softer key than their 
morning notes ; the air was full of fragrance, 
laden with the sweet odors of flowering vines, 
vernal grass, and the perfume from a hundred 
flower-cups, that was wafted out by the gently 
stirring breeze. 

It was all like a pastoral for beauty and 
peace, — and my children, they were to me 
fajr and beautiful as idyls, — the bright young 
things, so fresh and joyous ; as I looked at 
them I straightway remembered one of the 
quaint fancies or legends that Father St. Claire 
used to tell me in the days' of my youth. 
These legends, all through my life they have 
been wont to come back to me, seeming often- 
times like flowers, shining on my pathway 
with a spirit of sweet meaning, that has made 
it easier to tread ; that has made me smile 
sometimes, too, one of those smiles that are 


OUR SAINTS. 8 1 

like echoes to sighs, and yet none the less 
dear because of the sigh. 

Smile, I say, something as one does when 
their way leads through the grain and corn 
fields, — the realities of life, — and yet they spy 
in among the cereals the blue-eyed corn flow- 
ers, looking up with their delicate leaves 
fringed as daintily as the far-famed blue gen- 
tian of New England’s rugged coast, which 
seems to us old England inhabitants a flower 
of wondrous rare beauty, — or they see peep- 
ing out, the star-shaped, golden-hearted pur- 
pledeaved little blossoms that upspring a trio 
on a stalk among the waving grain. 

But to return to the legend that came into 
my memory as I sat there on the river bank, 
looking at my children, and wondering how 
their young hearts would respond to my tale. 

It was only that oft-told and familiar story 
of “ how Apollo met the Muses and the 
Graces playing on a flowery mead, in sweet 
sport mixed with earnest, while Memory, the 
grave and noble mother of the Muses, watched 
their pastime, — and of how each of the four- 
6 


82 


OUR SAINTS. 


teen uttered a line of verse, Apollo beginning, 
and then the nine Muses singing their part, 
while the three Graces warbled each in turn, 
till at last a low sweet strain from Memory 
made an harmonious close, — and all the poets 
all the world over knew that the first sonnet 
had been made.” 

This was the legend I recalled, and it came 
to me with a sweet significance, casting a 
song-like hope over the future, — for, — though 
mother and children as we were, we never 
could sing a perfect song again, — for our Apol- 
lo, his voice was silent, — yet we could each 
sing a sweet strain of music, each make life a 
psalm, each develop and fulfill the purpose for 
which we were born. 

And, “ the chief end of man is to glorify 

God.” 


XI. 


mother’s journal still. 

T)EFORE I spoke of the facts which I had 
gathered my children around me to listen 
to, we had a talk about true wealth, and what 
it consisted in. 

In reply to my saying, it was something 
more to be treasured than broad acres and 
ancestral estates, Eulalie nestled her head 
down on my shoulder, and said : 

“ Yes, indeed, mamma, for what is the value 
of our beautiful park and the dear old Hall, in 
comparison to the value of the love in your 
heart for us.” 

“True enough,” responded Hugh, in his 
clear, ringing voice, “ ‘ the affections of the 
heart are property but let me tell you, little 
sister, broad acres and ancestral domains are 
not to be lightly esteemed.” 


(83) 


OUR SAINTS. 


84 

And gaily the lad pelted Eulalie with the 
cowslip balls Zita was twining in rounded 
beauty for the young ones, that were sitting 
on the grass at her feet. 

Yet though it was Hugh who answered thus, 
he was the one who rebounded first when I 
went on to tell that the broad acres and 
ancestral domains, which he deemed of such 
value, were no longer mine or my children’s. 

It was Hugh, too, who took up the thread 
of my narrative, — such a dark, sombre-hued 
thread, — and by his bright spirit and cheer- 
laden words, inwove with it a shining thread 
that straightway served to cast into shadow 
the somewhat gloomy tints of mine. 

As is wont to be the way, when hearts and 
lives are young, that “ one touch of hope was 
enough to lift them from earth like wings,” — 
all but Francis, — the gloom did not pass from 
his face. 

As we walked home, our steps were slower 
than in the morning, and my children spoke, 
too, in softer voices, and their words were 
more earnest. 


OUR SAINTS. 


85 

There was double reason for this, for apart 
from what I had told them, memories of our 
loss in their dear father’s departure from 
earth, were apt to come to my tender-hearted 
sons and daughters with a deeper meaning 
when the day was near its ending. 

And there is something quieting, too, in the 
influence of the time, a peculiar tenderness in 
that hour ; the twilight bridge that spans from 
day to night. 

When home was reached, and the younger 
ones had said good-night and closed their 
bright eyes in the sweet, peaceful slumber of 
innocent childhood, (dear children, they held 
the daisy flowers, the daffodils, and cowslips 
they had gathered in their dimpled hands, 
even while they slept, nurse could not say 
them nay), my older sons and daughters, the 
four who understood as the little ones could 
not, the full import of my words, sat with me 
for long on the vine-embowered veranda. 

And it was then, that we talked of the 
future; then, that I caught the firstnote of 
that bitterness that had already found a 


86 


OUR SAINTS. 


lodging place in my Francis’ heart; then, 
that Zita made glowing word-pictures for 
us, in which we every one had a mission 
to fulfill. 

Change so quickly asserts itself, and most of 
us are so wonderfully created with an adap- 
tiveness to it, that before that month of June 
had passed, to an outward observer, we had 
all settled down calmly into the routine of 
regular occupations, and were apparently un- 
disturbed by our altered circumstances. 

But during that month, I, the mother, had 
made discoveries in the true characters and 
hearts of my children, that made them dearer 
to me than ever before, though verily I had 
thought them always as dear as dear could be. 
Francis, with but few words, but a resolution 
in his tone that precluded remonstrance, had 
informed me and his guardian, cousin Regi- 
nald, that he had decided on the life of a 
scholar, and that authorship was his goal ; 
while Hugh, with less of self-assertion, but no 
less eagerness, claimed cousin Reginald’s in- 
fluence in securing an appointment in his 


OUR SAINTS. 87 

father's old regiment, a position for which 
application was made in due time. 

Thus, with Hugh’s quick fancy, aided by 
Zita’s bright imagination, many an hour of 
that summer time did the lad spend in pictur- 
ing himself a true knight, a defender of his 
country, and champion of the oppressed. 

All the impulses of Hugh’s nature respond- 
ed to these dreams, and no sooner was the 
promise — when he attained the proper age — 
of his commission secured, than he began a 
careful study of the geography and history of 
India, with special reference to recent cam- 
paigns in that country of lurking danger and 
treacherous foe. 

Little Yvo caught the spirit of Hugh’s en- 
thusiasm, and child though he was, he too 
began to dream, and plan for a manhood, 
“ that would help other people,” as he ex- 
pressed it, and relieve the suffering. 

But when battle and carnage were discuss- 
ed by the elder ones, always this dear child 
would nestle close to my side, whispering, 
“ But, mamma, I would rather relieve suf- 


88 


OUR SAINTS. 


fering like the kind surgeon that bound 
up father’s wounds, than make it, as the 
soldiers do.” » 

“ And you shall, you darling,” Zita was 
wont to reply; “you shall care for the sick 
and the wounded, with the skill of a wise, well- 
trained, tender-hearted surgeon, and I will go 
and nurse them, like a sister of charity”; and 
gaily she would twist the snowy cambric of 
her handkerchief into counterfeit of a high- 
crowned sick-nurse regulation cap, and fasten, 
like a Puritan maiden, a spotless kerchief 
across her drooping, graceful shoulders, to 
make the picture complete. 

. The children called Zita those days their 
prophetess, for she made plans for them all. 
Eulalie was to be a rich lady, loving and 
beloved ; Eulalie, whom the grateful people 
should call, “ Eulalie the Good.” 

Francis by the power 

“ Of his sweet minstrelsy. 

Some hearts for truth and goodness should gain, 

And charm some grovellers to uplift their eyes 
And suddenly wax conscious of the skies.” 


OUR SAINTS. 


89 


Hugh was to be the hero brother — 

“ A beacon light to all the rising youth, 

The perfect pattern of a Christian knight. 

The noblest hero of the noblest age ; ” 

and Herbert, the one we all called our little 
clergyman, he was such a devout, true-souled 
child, for him Zita prophesied 

“ The reward of looking back on life. 

The fight well fought, the race well run, to see 
That all things true and good were wrought in God ; ” 

while for Maud, who was so like to Herbert 
in devoutness of disposition, and earnestness 
of purpose, Zita whispered, 

“ Hopes each more sweet than each, 

.... Like the whispers of the leaves 
That tremble round the nightingale.” 

To Yvo, always she spoke of him, who “ Him- 
self took our infirmities, and bare our sick- 
nesses,” and it was she, who taught the little 
lad that motto, that is ever graven on the 
shield of the true physician, “ They serve 
God best, who serve His creatures most.” 


9 o 


OUR SAINTS. 


What is that shield ? — Verily a brave heart, 
a true soul, a pure purpose, a tender pity. 
And, are not these his safety and protection, 
surer than ever shield wrought of well-tried 
metal, and made by hand of most skillful 
workmen ? 

Zita thus defined it, as she talked one even- 
tide with the children out on the lawn, in the 
sunset glow, and when Yvo begged her for a 
verse for his profession, smilingly she said : 

“ Gently and kindly ever at distress 
Melted to more than woman’s tenderness. 

Yet firm and steadfast at his duty’s post.” 

As for Britta, the sunny, bright-tempered, 
joyous-hearted child, Zita said her name held 
her future, as her dear little face did, our little 
maid : 


“ With wondrous eyes, 

Not afraid, but clear and tender, 

Blue, and filled with prophecies.” 

For herself my Zita prophesied no future; 
but often those days I saw a look in her eyes 
that made me know my daughter would be 
indeed a true sister of charitv, not onlv to 


OUR SAINTS. 


91 

her own home circle, but to the great family 
of men and women, brothers and sisters, 
needing help all the wide world over. 

Often I heard her singing to herself too in 
a voice clear as a lark’s, the song of a sun- 
beam and dew-drop — and, was not that a 
prophecy ? 


“ O sunbeam, O sunbeam ! 

I would be a sunbeam too ! 
When the winter chill 
Hushes lark and rill ; 

When the thunder-showers 
Bow the weeping flowers ; 
When the shadows creep, 

Cold, and dark, and deep ; 

I would follow swift and bright, 
Blending all my love and light, 
Chasing winter grim and hoary, 
Shining all the tears away ; 
Turning all the gloom to glory, 
All the darkness into day. 


“ O dew-drop, O dew-drop, 

I would be a dew-drop too ! 
When the fatal glow, 

Sultry, still and slow, 

Makes the scentless flowers 
Droop in withering bowers, 


9 2 


OUR SAINTS. 


Leaf and shade and bloom 
Touched with early doom ; 

I would follow, sweet and bright, 
Blending life and love and light ; 
Making what was parched and dreary. 
Glad and lovely, fresh and fair. 

Softly cheering what was weary, 
Sparkling, starlike, everywhere.” 


XII 


S I copied from my mother’s reminis- 



cences this morning, I sat in her favor- 
ite nook, — the alcove retreat ; and every time 
I glanced up I caught the outside view re- 
flected in the mirror. 

A dreary scene ; rain had been falling since 
noon the day before, and the tree boughs 
hung heavy, drooped low from, the weight of 
the thousand drops that had fallen upon the 
tender leaves. 

Yet there is music to me in the friendly 
patter of the little drops against the window- 
pane, and a sense of comfort in looking for- 
ward to a quiet morning, undisturbed by in- 
comers from the outer world. 

I began these memories with an idea of 
dividing them into eight parts, but I find I 
can not do so ; for while we all are as distinctly 


( 93 ) 


94 


OUR SAINTS . 


defined as separate stars, yet the story of one 
unfolds the story of another, and as Francis 
would not have been what he is without 
Hugh, so on through the eight we all seem 
living illustrations of the Bible truth, that 
“ no man liveth or dieth to himself.” 

This self-hood ! — what a wonderful, complex 
thing it is; and the living and the dying, how 
involved the one with the other. 

“ I die daily,” wrote St. Paul, and we know 
that he meant death to self. “ Create in me 
a new heart,” — that is, a new life, wrote David, 
and we know equally well what he meant. 

But I will continue my mother’s story, 
passing on a page or two beyond the last ex- 
tracts I find written : 

I said we settled down into our regular 
life again, almost before the summer that 
followed that spring-time, marked by sorrow 
and change, had fully opened, and to a 
stranger my group would have seemed happy 
and light of heart again. 

But my mother-eyes looked deeper, and 


OUR SAINTS. 


95 

before the midsummer holidays had half 
elapsed, I saw my brood from the oldest to 
the youngest needed change; so with naught 
more of preparation than a brief day of plan- 
ning and packing, we left home on a bright 
sunshiny morning, and before the bridge of 
noon had been crossed by more than two or 
three hours, we found ourselves comfortably 
ensconced in one of the quaintest of the many 
quaint houses, that are nestled like birds’ nests 
in tree boughs, among the wooded hills that 
shelve down to the waters’ edge of Dartmouth 
Haven. 

Our approach to the Bay had possessed the 
delight of a perpetual surprise to my young 
folk, for more than once suddenly its exit to 
the sea seemed closed in by the enfolding 
hills and projecting rocks, while its blue wa- 
ters appeared like the calm surface of some 
inland lake. 

As I told my Zita, it strongly reminded me 
of the beautiful Italian lake where we spent 
the first summer of her life. 

We, — ah, that happy we, — never to be again 


96 OUR SAINTS. 

on earth in its rounded fullness, for then it in- 
cluded my husband. 

But I did not let the young things catch a 
hint of my heart-ache, — only Eulalie, with the 
quick, sympathetic instinct of her sensitive 
nature, divined it, — and she stole her hand 
into mine, as I uttered that we, and looked 
up with a smile that was tender, and so like 
her father’s smile. I had chosen Dartmouth 
as our holiday retreat, partly because it was a 
quiet, little frequented place, and partly be- 
cause it combined so many attractions for the 
different tastes of my sons and daughters. 

But chiefly I had thought of Francis ; my 
heart was sore about the youth ; he seemed 
to have drifted even in a few short weeks so 
far away from me, a veil of reserve had sprung 
up between us, a something as impalpable as 
the gray mist that half obscures the landscape 
on a summer’s morning, but that was enough 
to make a mother’s heart ache. 

And I had a feeling that perchance the 
fresh, breezy air from the wide open water 
beyond the Bay, would serve to blow it away 


OUR SAINTS. 


97 

from his young spirit, something as the sun- 
shine always served to lift clouds from my 
own heart. 

Then, too, there is so much of interest to 
an eager, inquiring mind in all that region, I 
knew if nature failed to please and divert my 
lad, he would find pleasure in the study of 
Dartmouth’s two churches, the one so unlike 
the other. 

The very first evening, while Hugh, the sis- 
ters, and little brothers were as happy as sea- 
gulls, running hither and thither on the sandy 
beach that stretched out at ebb tide from 
below the grassy terraces of our landlady’s 
garden, Francis and I wandered away through 
the narrow streets that led toward the harbor 
part of the town, and to the rock on which is 
built the picturesque little church of Saint 
Petrocks. 

More than once on our way we paused to 
examine some curious gable-end, richly-cor- 
niced old dwelling, the front of which dis- 
played grotesque carving in wood ; or to smile 
at the irregularly built lesser houses that 
7 


g$ OUR SAINTS. 

edged the steep and narrow roadway, the 
lower tiers frequently connecting with those 
above by flights of steps. 

When at last we stood within shadow of 
the church porch, the golden glow of the 
summer evening was resting like a glory on 
earth, sky, and ocean. 

Below the church uprose the embattled 
towers and turrets of Clifton Castle, while on 
the opposite eminences, through the embower- 
ing woods, we caught glimpses of the remains 
of old fortifications, and south of the castle, 
on a still lower site, and nearer the sea, the 
mouldering keep of the Castle of Kingsweare. 

It was the hour for the even-song, and soft 
and low came floating out to us from within 
the little church, the tender notes of the 
organ, and the sweet, bird-like voices of the 
chanting choristers. 

A melody, that only lasted for a minute, 
and then the small congregation came out 
reverently into the glow of the ending day, 
and with countenances on which a peaceful 
calm rested, turned homeward. 


OUR SAINTS. 


99 

There were scarce a dozen in all, and they 
mostly old women, only one maiden among 
them, a fair-haired, slender girl, with a light 
step, that sped swiftly down the steep cliff path. 

She turned for a second on passing us, and 
she answered my smile with an answering 
smile, — nevertheless there was a shadow on 
her face, a look in her eyes, that told her 
even-song had been a prayer for some sailor 
lad who tarried long on the wide sea, — so 
long, the heart of the maiden needed to pray. 
This was my first sight of Annice Lee. 

Then came the chorister boys, followed by 
the white-haired rector, who bowed in kindly 
greeting, and last the sexton ; he lingered for 
a word, and bade us welcome to the church, 
as though it had been his own. 

And then Francis and I were left alone. 
Meanwhile the glow had deepened ; the gold- 
en light melted into a tender violet hue, the 
summer night was drawing near, the shadow 
of the hills was on the water. 

All was silent save the faint sound of a 
boatman’s oar, and the low cadence of a 


100 


OUR SAINTS. 


boatman’s song, that floated up from below 
the cliff where the waters were so calm. 

A sweet fragrance filled the air. It was an 
hour of perfect harmony in nature, and as 
though to complete the beauty of it all, sud- 
denly up from behind the castle tower and 
the background of woody hills, the clear, full 
moon rose, sending a quiver of golden light 
across the peaceful waters of the bay, crown- 
ing the old ruin opposite, the rugged cliffs, and 
wooded heights, with a radiance softer than 
sunshine. 

Silently we stood for long amid the beauty 
and the wonder of it, and then I told Francis, 
we too must turn homeward, but our steps 
were slower than Annice Lee’s, and my boy 
found voice to say much he had been silent 
about during the last weeks, as together we 
went, mother and son, hand in hand, down 
the steep cliff path. 

I knew it was easier for him to speak when 
I was close by him thus, and he held my 
hand, and touch could in a measure take the 
place of sight. 


OUR SAINTS. 


IOI 


I knew the lad could tell me better, of the 
things nearest his heart, when the light 
was dim, giving in a certain way a sense of 
spiritual invisibility, even while the voice told 
of the things that belonged to the spirit. 

It was not much Francis had to tell, but 
after it, we never drifted quite so far apart 
again. It was only how there had come bit- 
terness, rebellion, and doubt into his young 
soul. When I asked him what he questioned, 
whence the bitterness, why the rebellion, he 
could scarcely tell. 

Only he knew that he had passed out of 
the happy time, when his heart and voice 
could join with mine and his brothers and sis- 
ters, as at night and morning we 

“ Raised the lofty chant, 

Or read the records of the saints of God, 

Or told the tale that never waxes old, 

The great good news, of all the works of Christ.” 

Only he knew he had met that great throb- 
bing, pulsing question, the mystery of life, 
and he could not seize and hold it, he could 
no more sound it than he could the waters of 


102 


OUR SAINTS. 


the Bay fathoms deep, it seemed to him a 
strange, pathetic, almost phantasmal thing, 
and yet it had never seemed so solemn, and 
so real, as during the last months. 

“And you never can grasp it,” I told my boy ; 
“ always the unknown must be about you. Can 
you understand the wide ocean, the stars, the 
great hills, the wind, that bloweth where it 
listeth, and no man knoweth whence it com- 
eth, or whither it goeth ? ” — Thus I asked him. 

•I told him too, that he was starting on a 
road to which there was no end, that “ the 
same conflict on which he was entering had 
been going on for ages, and yet was no nearer 
a conclusion than it was in the beginning,” 
and softly I whispered, “Remember, Francis, 
he that trusts, is greater than he that proves.” 

He said nothing more. We were treading the 
streets of the town again, in a minute we 
were beyond it ; and then, just before us, en- 
circled by the moonlight, stood Zita and Eu- 
lalie holding wide open the wicket gate, that 
led into our landlady’s flower-bordered gar- 
den, where grew tree-like fuchias, hanging 


OUR SAINTS. 


103 

heavy with their bell-like blossoms, and scar- 
let geraniums, thousand-leaved roses, deep 
pink and red, making warm patches of color 
in the silvery gleam of the moonshine. 

The younger ones were fast asleep, tucked 
away in their snowy coverleted beds, dream- 
ing dreams of the beautiful to-morrow. Hugh, 
my friendly son, was chattering merrily to a 
group of fisher folk, that were smoking their 
pipes, and spreading their nets to dry, down 
on the sandy beach ; thus only Zita and Eula- 
lie were watching for our coming. 

Zita, who was all enthusiastic over the won- 
ders of the shore, that she had discovered even 
in that brief time; her hands were laden with 
treasures, tangled bits of sea-weed, rosy red and 
fairy green, — while Eulalie, she had the look of 
a mermaid, as she stood there in the moon- 
lit- 

What thought was in her heart I wondered. 

“ I have been listening to the sea, mother,” 
she said, “ listening in silence.” 

What voice had it held for my child? Hei 
heart was young, life was bright and beauti- 


OUR SAINTS. 


104 

ful to her, the angel that beckoned her on was 
Hope. 

The silence, had it 

“ Music brought 

From the spheres ! as if a thought 
Having taken wings did fly 
Through the reaches of the sky ? ” 

I too listened to the voice of the sea that 
night. — 

But,— its whisper to me, was a far different 
strain from the music-full murmur my child 
heard. 

For as I hearkened, over and over it sighed, 
that plaintive dirge of a lonely, widowed 
heart : 

“ Break, break, break, 

At the foot of thy crags, oh sea ! 

But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
Will never come back to me.” 


XIII. 


CONTINUED EXTRACTS FROM MY MOTHER’S 
JOURNAL. 

T HE morrow dawned a day beautiful as 
the children had dreamed ; and it was 
the prelude to a full month of beautiful days, 
every one ladened with happiness to my flock, 
spite Zita’s accident ; and the occasional ruf- 
fling of tempers, and conflict of wills, which 
among eight were wont to occur, reminding 
one of the little puffs of wind that would sud- 
denly come and play for a minute over the 
blue waters of the Bay, stirring a thousand 
tiny waves, but never one that tossed high 
enough to be foam-crested. 

Looking back on that time,— so brief, only 
a month, — I wonder at all it held for me 
and mine. — Sometimes as I recall those 
swiftly speeding hours, I feel they were verily 

(105) 


io 6 OUR SAINTS. 

like the days in which a sower scatters with a 
generous hand seeds, that are to upspring in 
after days, with plants that are bud, flower, 
and at last fruit-laden, for they came freighted 
with life-long influences to us every one. 

Bud, flower, and fruit ! There is something 
deeply significant in this progression, a type of 
life, in its threefold development. — For, do we 
not smile when the bud opens into flower, just 
as we smile when children pass into youth, — 
and do we not sigh when the flower fades and 
falls, just as we sigh when youth begins to 
fade before the approach of age ? 

But we might smile with never a sigh at all, 
all the way on from bud to ripened garnered 
fruit, if we did but remember the sacred mean- 
ing of the type held in the truth, that “ the 
flowers fade and fall, but a flower is only the 
means by which the fruit is formed,” and “ our 
existence here is but a daily dying, a con- 
tinual production of a blossom, within whose 
petals as they wither is expanding the im- 
mortal fruit.” 


OUR SAINTS. 


107 

I had not wished to make any acquaintances 
on coming to Dartmouth, but events so sel- 
dom are counterparts to our wishes, a fact 
I learned the very first morning after our 
arrival. 

When alone with the children I could be 
cheerful, their joys were so mine ; then I knew 
too if my husband could have spoken to me, 
he would have wished it so ; I knew he would 
have said it was thus I could best show my 
love for him. 

But the presence of strangers somehow 
seemed to hurt me ; I seemed to lose the 
power of making an effort; I could not bear 
to see little children climb about their father’s 
knee, young maidens cling to a father’s hand, 
or sons hearken to his words ; I could not bear 
to see wives, happy wives, looking up to their 
husbands with eyes full of calm content, and 
restful confidence. 

It was not that I begrudged them their 
happiness, — but, — but, — 

It was for this reason, that morning, when 
groups of pleasure - seekers were beginning 


io 8 OUR SAINTS. 

to assemble about the quay and on the 
sandy beach, that I left my little people with 
nurse ; and with Francis, Hugh, Zita, and Eu- 
lalie, turned inland, away from the blue waters 
of the Bay that were beginning to be dotted 
with many a gaily decorated pleasure craft, 
vessels that spread wide before the summer 
breeze their white-winged sails, and that far 
outstripped the fisher boats that were sailing 
seaward too. 

A brave little fleet of work-day boats, with 
broad sails unfurled, sails that glowed in rich 
umber and brown hues, as the sunlight 
brought out the color hidden in the shadow 
below the cliff, a shadow out of which they 
floated on to the sapphire sea as birds float 
skyward. 

It was a picturesque sight,* all bright, bril- 
liant, and breezy with pleasure and anticipa- 
tion. It was morning! — three little words 
that mean so much. 

All the many joyous people that came out 
from the houses that lined the craggy hill that 
overlooked the Bay for a mile or more, were 


OCR SAINTS . 


109 

pleasure-seekers, — smiling people, — and yet 
more than one face sobered as their gaze 
rested for a moment on my heavy widow’s 
mourning, and my children’s sombre garments 
of sorrow. 

Yes, there were tears, I think, in more than 
one mother and wife’s eyes, as they passed us. 
Human sympathy, it is such a dear thing, so 
wide-spread, so quick to awake, — and alas, the 
heart-ache of sorrow and loss is so universal, 
even the faces which smile the gayest, well- 
nigh every one carries its echo in their hearts. 

It was Francis who chose our path, — the 
very one he and I had trod the evening be- 
fore, only now he led beyond St. Petrock’s to 
the older, more spacious church of St. Savi- 
our’s, the pride of all the neighboring country- 
side, an imposing edifice, dating back to Ed- 
ward the Third’s time. A church built cathe- 
dral-wise, and possessing considerable beauty. 
Its chief ornament its altar piece, the pulpit 
and ancient wooden screen, with its rood-loft 
at the extreme of the chancel. 

It was past the hour for morning service. 


no 


OUR SAINTS. 


We thought the church deserted save for the 
presence of ourselves ; thus we started, as we 
stood before the stone pulpit, admiring the 
enrichments carved in wood, and evidently of 
a later date, that had been added to it, when 
suddenly breaking the hush, a voice sounded, 
as distinct and clear as the note of a bell, 
though the speaker was at the far end of the 
building : 

Every gift we receive is but a promise; 
every beauty we behold but a prophecy ; every 
pleasure we enjoy but a foretaste.’ ” 

These were the first words we heard Mr. 
Ward speak. 

As I recall them I turn back to the thought 
with which I began to write on the opposite 
page, and repeat ; they, and what came after 
them, were verily like a handful of fruit-bear- 
ing seed, scattered broadcast on my own and 
my children’s minds and hearts. 

And yet, as the seed fell, I do not think 
we heeded it an/ more than the earth seems to 
heed the golden grain the sower lets fall on 
the dull earth-clods. 


our 'saints. m 

Only when it had rooted did we know it 
had fallen. 

A minute later Mr. Ward and his compan- 
ions came round from the other side of the 
pulpit, and there we met, and there we would 
have parted with a bow of passing courtesy, 
but at that second, Zita gave a sharp cry of 
pain. 

She was always as eager after information 
as a bee after honey, and seeking to decipher 
a baffling inscription encircling one of the 
wooden panels, she had sped up the stone 
steps of the pulpit, when startled by the sight 
of a stranger, she had slipped and fallen. 

In a moment we were all gathered about 
her, mother, brothers, sister, and strangers. 

A sprained ankle and bruised face were 
the extent of Zita’s injuries, but they were 
enough to immediately break down the En- 
glish reserve, that was so characteristic of the 
Wards, as we afterward discovered. — And 
that hour was the dawning hour of a friend- 
ship with them, that has been so precious to 
me and mine. 


I 12 


OUR SAINTS. 


We found these kindly strangers familiar 
habitues of the seaport town, and lodgers, 
too, in the very next house to our landlady’s. 

Hugh also speedily discovered that they 
knew cousin Reginald’s branch of the Glent- 
wood family, and that we were not strangers 
to them, at least by name. 

The getting Zita back to the cottage was no 
easy task, but she was brave of heart, and 
made light of pain. 

It was Mr. Ward who went for a surgeon, 
and kind Miss Anna, who rubbed the poor 
little bruised and swollen foot till he came. 
Miss Anna, too, who, when the peace of eve- 
ning fell, came and sat for an hour with “ our 
prisoner,” as the children called Zita, — Grace 
was with her, — Grace, a maiden the age\)f my 
Eulalie. 

We formed another acquaintance, too, that 
day, and that was with Anniqe Lee, the girl 
with whom I had exchanged a smile as she 
passed down the cliff path after even-song at 
Saint Petrock’sthe night before. 


XIV, 


EXTRACTS CONTINUED. 

HOSE new friends of ours, Miss Anna 



-* Ward, her brother, and Grace — the 
younger sister — possessed charms for us all, 
and before a week had passed they filled much 
the same place in the pleasure of our days 
that sunshine fills in the landscape. Mr. 
Ward was a hard-worked London curate, to 
whom this time of rest was a holiday, in the 
fullest sense of the word ; that broad sense that 
drops the i into a y, and reads holy-day, for 
he looked behind, and touched the sacred 
meaning hidden in nature’s beauty and grand- 
eur, as well as in human experiences, whether 
of joy or sorrow. 

Hence 


8 


(113) 


OUR SAINTS. 


114 

“two worlds were his,” 

“ The mystic heaven and earth within, 

.... The sea and sky, — without.” 

And both worlds had a heart to this earnest- 
minded young man, whose daily life for full 
two years past had brought him into close 
contact with a sterner, harsher side of exist- 
ence than I or my children had ever dreamed 
of. 

Nevertheless his nature was as fresh, his 
power of abandonment to the enjoyments 
that abounded on that coast, and near inland 
country, as complete as my lads ; the only dif- 
ference was, the older man looked farther, 
saw more than the younger ones. 

He was many-sided, too, and endowed with 
a quick discernment of character, which led 
him to give individual sympathy and interest. 

Thus, with Francis, he talked of the ques- 
tions which were stirring my lad’s soul ; lie 
straightway detected his inner unrest ; and 
how the youth, from more than usual moral 
earnestness, had been brought to a stand-still 
in his childhood’s beliefs, and “ plunged into 


OUR SAINTS. 


5 


reverie before the mysterious phenomenon of 
human life, — evil, — that dark shadow which 
casts a gloom over every circle of life, which 
meets us in the past history of our race, be- 
trays its presence in the present, and lurks in 
the inmost recesses of our own being.” 

Mr. Ward did not contend with this strug- 
gle going on in Francis’ mind ; he did not 
strive to meet and answer his queries and 
speculations by any prescribed formula of 
belief ; on the contrary, he frankly acknowl- 
edged 

“ The Truth is vast, 

And never was there creed embraced it all.” 

And steadily every day of that month of 
days Francis’ friendship for the young curate 
grew. 

Hugh’s sympathy and warm admiration had 
been won from the first hour of meeting, for 
Mr. Ward loved the free life of hill and ocean 
almost as well as my young athlete did. He 
was a man of splendid physique, too, strong 
and muscular, of a ruddy Saxon type, well 


OUR SAINTS. 


1 16 

calculated to win the loyal devotion of an en- 
thusiastic lad like Hugh. 

Many were the times during that month 
that I watched the two run down the steep 
cliff path, in the early morning, for a plunge 
in the stilly pool of a rocky inlet, and then off 
for a row across the broad channel, and back 
before the silvery peal of St. Saviour’s morn- 
ing chimes sounded to wake the world up. 

I can see the tiny skiff now as it shot across 
the Bay, the long, steady sweep of the oars 
keeping time, and speeding it on its way like 
a flying bird. 

There were inland rambles, too, summer 
days spent on the breezy hills, where the pur- 
ple heather grew like a violet mist, or amid 
the ivy-grown ruins. 

Excursions in which the whole troop joined, 
even to little Britta, only Zita and Miss Anna 
left out. 

For poor Zita could go no further than to 
the rocky ledge, at the east of. the garden 
boundary. 

The sprain proved such an obstinate wrench 


OUR SAINTS. 


1 1 7 

she had to be helped even that short distance. 
Our brave, cheerful Zita, who never once com- 
plained, but speeded our going and coming 
with smiles. 

Long talks she and gentle Miss Anna had 
those days, and when I asked her once what 
they talked about, she smilingly responded : 

“ Our mirror is a blessed book,” — , 


Held up to the sun, 

It needs an eagle’s gaze, 

So perfectly the polished stone 
Gives back the glory of his rays ; 

Turn it, and it shall paint as true 
The soft green of the vernal earth, 
And each small flower of bashful hue, 
That closest hides its lowly birth.” 


And though she did not quote further from 
Keble’s lines, I knew from her look that she 
had 


“ Happy hours of heavenward thought ! ” 
I knew, led by this gentle Miss Anna, 

r 


OUR SAINTS. 


118 

“ Heaven to her gaze opened wide, 

And brightest angels to and fro, 

On messages of love did glide 

’Twixt God above, and Christ below.” 

There were long talks, too, in which we all 
joined as we sat together on the cliff toward 
twilight ; the hour when the softened light of 
evening was beginning to enfold — like wings 
of brooding love — the quiet town, the shadow- 
ed castle, the old churches, even while yet the 
far hill-tops were crested with the mellow sil- 
very light of the lingering radiance of sunset, 
and arrow-like rays of brightness flashed in 
response from the tall masts of the vessels at 
anchor in the harbor, or played like good- 
night kisses on the white sails of the pleasure 
crafts, turning shoreward, as the day waned. 

The younger children were wont to gather 
about us at these times, tired with play, their 
active little feet weary at last, their song-like 
voices hushed for awhile, as they listened, as 
children love to do, to the talk of the elders ; 
listened with the sweet innocent souls of 
childhood, receiving into their young minds 


OUR SAINTS. 


II 9 

what they could understand, just as the flower- 
bells an hour later would receive every drop 
of dew their tiny cups could hold. 

And as we older people, myself, Miss Anna, 
and Mr. Ward, too, looked down on the up- 
turned faces of the listening children, surely 
we received full as much as they did. 

For always in the innocent trustfulness of 
confiding childhood I think one finds “ treas- 
ures of richer knowledge than is to be got 
from all the wisdom of books.” 

Thus the summer days came and went, till 
at last the month ended. 

On the morrow we were to part, rpy chil- 
dren and myself to turn homeward to the old 
Hall, where every nook and corner, every tree 
and grass -blade, was as thickly wedded to 
memories, as the curious bits of conglomerate 
that studded the cliffs were starred with tiny 
yellow shells. 

Mr. Ward and Miss Anna, they were to re- 
turn to their life-work in the busy, crowded 
haunts of London’s thickly populated East 
End. 


20 


OUR SAINTS. 


And Grace, she was to be their song-bird, 
their daisy flower with a golden heart, all 
through the dreary winter days. 

11 When summer comes we will meet again ” 
— thus the young things said to one another ; 
thus by a hope they robbed the parting of its 
pain, as is the way with youth. 

When the last evening came it was Eulalie, 
the most timid of my flock, who was yet the 
bravest. 

For it was she who asked a question, more 
than once she and Zita had tried to ask Mr. 
Ward, but lacked the courage. 

It was what he meant by the first words we 
had heard him utter that day in the church. 

Eulalie paused as she repeated them, as 
though to add force to the interrogation in 
her tone, — something as a nightingale pauses 
in the refrain of his song-. 

“ ‘ Every gift we receive is but a promise ! 9 ” 
she said, and then followed the unspoken 
why ? which was as distinct as the undertone 
music of the sea, the sweetest music the waves 
hold, Zita was wont to say. 


OUR SAINTS. 


121 


“ ‘ Every beauty but a prophecy,’ ” — and 

again the unuttered, yet tangible, why? 

“ ‘ Every pleasure we enjoy but a fore- 
taste ! ’ ” As she said these last words, Eu- 
lalie looked up, — she had been looking down, 
tracing a quaint device in the drifted sand 
that had lodged at high tide on the rocky 
ledge on which we sat. 

Looked up, and gave voice to her unspoken 

queries, — for, — “ Tell me why?” she said 

But Mr. Ward did not tell ; he only replied : 
“ You must learn for yourself, Miss Eulalie.” 
And as he spoke, he took the slender reed, — 
a bit of salt marsh grass, strong and firm of 
fibre, — from Eulalie’s hand, and he, too, traced 
on the sea sand, — the very next incoming tide 
washed the words he wrote away. — But plainly 
we every one read them, even to little Britta, 
who spelled them out letter by letter : 

“ Promise, — Prophecy, — Foretaste.” — 

What did he mean, this hard-worked Lon- 
don curate ? 

Did he trace a parable for us there on the 
golden sand ? 


XV. 


REMINISCENCES PENNED BY MY MOTHER AT 
A SOMEWHAT LATER DATE. 



HE night following Eulalie’s question 


to Mr. Ward I fell asleep wondering 
what he meant, and I found no answer till the 
next day, when Annice Lee, by a few simple 
words, gave me the thread that unravelled his 
meaning. 

Writing the name Annice Lee, reminds me, 
that I said we formed another acquaintance 
besides the Wards during the day following 
our arrival in the seaport town of Dartmouth, 
and it was with this very Annice Lee. 

I never quite understood how the girl came 
to tell me her story while I was still a com- 
parative stranger to her, yet she had not been 
in my service a full couplet of days when she 
told it. 

But can any one understand the subtle at- 


(122) 


OUR SAINTS. 


123 


traction, that like the magnet with the needle, 
draws hearts together, breaks down barriers 
of natural reserve, and overleaps the differ- 
ences of social position ? 

My outward acquaintance with the girl 
came about quite simply. Zita’s accident 
made it necessary for me to engage a second 
maid to assist nurse Bland, and when I 
sought our landlady’s advice, she immediately 
proposed and sent for Annice Lee to fill the 
place. 

And she has been with me ever since in one 
capacity or another, always holding the posi- 
tion of an upper servant, and at the same 
time filling the place of a true friend, — she 
possesses such rare good sense, innate tact, 
and a certain wise as a serpent, yet harmless 
as a dove, spiritual wisdom. 

More than once a word of hers has flashed 
like a beam of light illumining some perplex- 
ity that has hedged my path, and helping me 
to see how to remove it, without injuring the 
flowers that are wont to grow along-side of 
the weeds, in these earthly path-ways. 


OUR SAINTS. 


124 

Annice began her story with no word of 
prelude, — neither did she apologize for its 
length. 

She trusted me, and thus was sure of my 
interest. 

She did not cease working as she told it ; all 
the time her hands were busy with the coarse 
twine, with which she was weaving the intri- 
cate web of knots and spaces of a hand-net 
for Yvo to use in the stilly pools and inlets, 
that were to be found at the base of the cliff, 
and along the shore of the Bay. 

“As a child,” she said, “ I lived in one of 
the houses in the second tier, above the quay, 
— our neighbors were mostly fisher-folk, like 
my father. I knew them every one, and as I 
grew older, never a trouble came knocking at 
a neighbor’s door, that it did not find our own 
on the latch, and cross our threshold too ; for 
somehow we fisher-folk were brought close 
together, the wives and mothers sharing the 
same anxiety during the storms that swept 
the coast, and the children knowing what 
head - winds, sudden squalls, reefs, and 


OUR SAINTS. 


125 

breakers meant, even before they talked 
plain. 

“ But the trouble that came was not from 
the sea, or the storm, but from the fever, and 
hot wind, — the fever, before which strong 
men and women fell victims, as grain falls be- 
fore a mower’s sickle, and my father and 
mother were among the first to go.” 

Annice’s voice had grown softer, her hand 
trembled a bit as memory turned the leaf 
marked by those dark days. 

Yet her voice was steady, as she continued, 
“ Their graves are up there in the church- 
yard of St. Petrocks,” — and she shivered as 
she added, “ It is such a comfort, ma’am, to 
see the green graves of those one loves ; the 
sea ! — it is such a wide, — such a lonely resting 
place, and it is such a dreary thing to look 
toward it at night and morning, and wonder, 

and wonder, if it is a grave, or if,” — and 

she shivered again. 

After a minute’s silence she resumed : 
“ Somehow when God spoke so loud to me as 
He did, when my father and mother died, I 


2 6 


OUR SAINTS. 


felt He must be very near, and I was not fear- 
some ; I went about doing all I could for the 
neighbors who were left, — after that, there 
came a time of peace ; every one was good to 
me, — and then, an evening, when the sunset 
glowed on the waters of the Bay, when every 
wave glittered and sparkled in the brightness, 
when a gallant ship with a strange rigging let 

loose its anchor in the harbor, and, — there 

was a sailor lad among that crew, brave and 

bright as a sun-flash, — and, — and, ” 

Annice did not tell me the close following 
story, but the mute pathetic way in which 
she let the twine she was knitting slip from 
her hands for a moment, as she stroked the 
slender ring on her finger, told it. — Yes, I 
knew the unsaid was only another version of 
that tale, that is as old as the hills, and the 

sea, — the tale of love and parting! 

“ That vessel,” she went on to say, “ from 
beyond the sea, lay there at anchor in the Bay, 
till the months counted full three, — then, as 
suddenly as the wind blows out of the north, 
its wide sails were spread one night, and in 


OUR SAINTS. 


127 

the morning it was gone, — and my sailor lad, 
gone too. — 

“But I never doubted him, ma’am,” she 
continued, “ though sometimes I am weary 
watching for his coming ; sometimes as I lin- 
ger on the shore, and strain my eyes to scan 
some faint sight of a ship across the Bay, 
coming landward, down the golden track of 
evening’s sunset light, I am tired a bit, tired 
waiting, but I never doubt him.” 

“ How long ago was it, Annice ? ” I ventured 
to ask. She counted her fingers as she re- 
plied : 

“The years they are seven,” — and yet she 
was watching still, this girl, — who never 
doubted, — watching the golden path across 
the sea, for the sailor lad who never came. 

“ No, I do not doubt him,” she softly re- 
peated to herself; “ something is wrong some- 
where, but, — God is good.” 

This was all the story Annice Lee told me, 
— and somehow, it served to bind her heart to 

mine. Well, it was not strange, for we both, 

this peasant girl, a fisherman’s daughter, and 


128 


OUR SAINTS. 


me, the lady of the Hall, a gallant colonel’s 
widow, had suffered, — both loved, — both knew 
what a grave meant ! — 

It scarcely needed a word of persuasion to 
win Annice’s consent to return with me to 
the Hall. “ I am like Ruth,” she said, in her 
humble, modest way, that took all of too great 
familiarity from the words, “ like Ruth, 
whithersoever thou goest, I will go, where 
thou dwellest, I will dwell.” 

In reply, though she was maid, and I was 
mistress, I whispered, “ God grant, Annice, 
your God may be my God,” — somehow, the 
way in which she had said “ God is good,” the 
faith of it, had taken such root in my heart. 

Annice was with us that last evening down 
on the cliff, sitting a little apart, looking off 
on the sea, but when Eulalie asked that ques- 
tion of Mr. Ward, she turned and listened for 
his reply, and she too read the words he 
traced on the yellow sand, — and this was how 
she was able to give me the clue to their 
meaning. “ I suppose, ma’am,” she said, “ Mr. 


OUR SAINTS. 


I29 


Ward was preaching one of those parable ser- 
mons, after the model of those the Saviour 
taught by the lilies of the field, and the chirp- 
ing sparrows. — It is beautiful to think, every 
good gift we receive from the Lord, is a prom- 
ise of another gift. — Every beautiful thing we 
behold a sort of hint-like, of a greater beauty 
There” and Annice looked up, — “ every pleas- 
ure, a sort of foretaste of the joy we shall 
know when, like the children of Israel, we 
have crossed over Jordan.” 

“And I am thinking too,” she continued, 
“ Mr. Ward had a double meaning, he looked 
so hard at Miss Eulalie as he spoke, as though 
he was thinking, that her, and the other 
young folks’ childhood and youthful days 
were God’s gift of promise to them, holding, 
according as their hearts and minds develop- 
ed, prophecies of their future, while the hap- 
piness that comes to them is but a foretaste 
of deeper joy.” 

How would my children be brought to a 
knowledge of this deeper joy, of which An- 
nice spoke ? 

9 


130 


OUR SAINTS. 


More than once I wondered, as I gazed on 
their bright young faces, and as I wondered, 
I prayed that they might keep “ the good of 
childhood ” with them, all through the years 
of their life. 

Surely “ the enthusiasm, the freshness of in- 
terest, the innocent simplicity, the spirit of 
hope, inquiry, and wonder, which character- 
ize early years ought to endure late in life. — 
We ought to take the child-heart with us into 
old age, — and old age should be but the 
beautiful ripened fruit of the blossom of youth, 
taking up into its own settled fullness, much 
of what was holiest, and loveliest in child- 
hood. We ought to grow by regaining, in a 
truer and more lasting form, the things that 
made our youth bright and happy.” 

But, do we ? — 

“ We must enter the kingdom of heaven on 
to the latest hour of life as little children.” 
For, — Christ said, “ Except ye become as lit- 
tle children ye shall in no wise enter in.” 


XVI. 


EXTRACTS CONTINUED. 

TUST as in nature, there are seasons of the 
** year that are marked by storms, equinoc- 
tial rains, and equinoctial gales, during which 
the sunshine only breaks through the rifted 
clouds in brief quickly-fleeting beams, and 
just as these stormy times are wont to follow 
seasons of calm weather, so, close following 
that month by the sea-side, which had been so 
full of peace to us all, there came a turbulent, 
stormy time, casting its baleful shadow of 
misrule over my flock. 

A time during which my authority seemed 
of scarce more weight than the breakwater 
below the cliff at Dartmouth, which seemed 
so powerless to hold in bay the waves, when 
winds were high, — and yet, though the spray 

(131) 


OUR SAINTS. 


132 

and the foam broke over that stay, never 
once, so Annice told me, had the waves really 
destroyed the barrier, — though they had beat 
hard against it, — hard. — 

All the gloom which I had thought lifted, 
seemed to settle again over Francis’ spirit ; 
while as for Hugh, he threatened to break 
quite loose from all restraint, and Zita, who 
had been so brave and patient, suddenly be- 
came restive ; even Eulalie, though her temper 
was always sweet as the fragrance of a flower, 
grew for a time dreamy, and indifferent to the 
simple pursuits that had formerly been her 
delight. 

Maud and Herbert, too, caught the spirit of 
disaffection, and for the first time in their 
lives were rebellious and moody under reproof ; 
even Yvo, and child Britta were restless, — for 
the spirit of the elder ones in a family is al- 
ways such a pervasive influence over the 
younger. 

What did it all mean? My mother-heart 
was sorely tried to find a cause for it. But 
not so Annice Lee, for when she met me one 


OUR SAINTS. 


133 


day with tears in my eyes, she said, “ Do not 
fear, ma’am, it will all come right ; it is only 
that their young souls are beginning to take 
for themselves independent root, — only wait.” 

Two words, that were the motto of Annice 
Lee’s patient, hopeful life. 

So I waited, — but it was not a happy time, 
and yet on looking back, I can see now that 
Annice was right, and that it was the rooting 
time of independent action and thought to 
my older ones, who had come to the place 
where the mile-stones of childhood were left 
behind, where the golden mile-stone of youth 
pointed only onward. And the path, it was 
strange to their untried feet, — “the myste- 
rious gate leading into the future’s undiscover- 
ed land,” it opened wide, — but — where would 
it lead? — No wonder the young things were 
perplexed. 

But I must not tarry over their transition 
time ; enough, if it was somewhat dark and 
enwrapt in sombre shadows of reserve, pet- 
ulance, and waywardness, according as their 
natures varied ; yet, like as at last the chrysalis 


134 


OUR SAINTS. 


breaks asunder the foldings of dull-hued mys- 
terious fibres that enclose it, and comes forth 
golden tinted and rainbow colored, a thing 
with wings, so my children came out from the 
shadows, every one of them, — though some 
stayed in longer than others, — yet when at 
last the outing time dawned, the saint echoes 
I had striven to plant in their souls, lo ! they 
had become saint-likenesses. 

And if they had to be sorely tried first, 
tried by joy as well as sorrow, was it not 
worth it ? — 

It was strange ; these sons and daughters 
of mine needed such different tests, as sor- 
row and joy. — Yet, why do I say strange, 
when every summer time nature repeats the 
same story in the language of flowers ; some 
needing sunshine, and some shade! — Yes, as 
long as time lasts in the world’s garden, there 
will always be evening primroses and morning- 
glories. 


XVII. 


TUST here I bridge a wide space in my 
** mother’s journal, only culling from it ex- 
tracts here and there, that serve to reveal the 
events of chief importance in our histories, — 
and the space stretches over full ten years, — 
time enough to have launched us all on the 
wide open sea of life, even to little Britta, who 
stepped out of childhood during them. 

EXTRACTS. 

Through the kindness of cousin Reginald, 
arrangements were made which enabled Fran- 
cis to enter Oxford six months sooner than 
we had anticipated. 

My son’s career as a student was brilliant ; 
he quickly won a claim to scholarly honor 
from classmate and instructors alike, and when 

(135) 


136 OUR SAINTS. 

his university career ended, he went forth, 
speeded by the good wishes and bright hopes 
of more than one veteran in learning. 

Outwardly all promised fair in Francis’ fu- 
ture. — But the inward unrest, — was it hushed ? 
Had he hearkened to the heavenly Voice, 
saying: “ Peace be still.” — Was there calm in 
his soul ? — 

It was thus I asked him, as arm in arm we 
trod the long sweep of the avenue, the even- 
ing following his return home, when his uni- 
versity days were over. 

As he replied, I needed to clasp close to 
my heart Annice Lee’s two words, “only 
wait,” for his answer showed that beliefs in 
which he had been trained had slipped away 
from him, and revealed too, that “he was so 
eager in his study of the newest schools of 
modern philosophy and thought, that faith 
not only in Christ, but even in God,” had 
well-nigh disappeared from his soul. — My boy, 
my first-born son was in spiritual darkness. 


During the summer months that followed 


OUR SAINTS. 


13 7 

Francis’ return, I had all my flock together 
again for awhile, even to Hugh, our young 
soldier. 

It was a summer of fair weather, marked 
by sunshiny days, the old dial on the lawn 
outdid itself in the counting of hours. 

The happy old sun-dial that counted only 
pleasant hours! — Such a counselor it has 
been to me and mine. — Ah, if we could, like 
it, only count and remember the pleasant 

hours ! and yet, — why do I wish thus, 

when it is so often in the dark hours that we 
learn the fullest lessons of strength, even if 
they be the hardest. For, — I think it is in 
the darkness that we learn most truly that we 
are nothing, — Christ all. 

But Eulalie, talking with me of this last 
evening, differs from me ; she said it seemed 
to her the deepest lessons of our own weak- 
ness and Christ’s strength, were something like 
the two extremes of midnight and midday. 

The darker the night the more stars one be- 
held, just as the brighter the light, the wider 
one’s outlook ; thus, she thought joy and sue- 


138 OUR SAINTS. 

cess made one realize their utter dependence 
on a Higher strength than their own, just as 
fully as sorrow and disappointment made one 
cling to it. 

Hugh joined us as we were talking of this 
spiritual strength, and he asked, “ What I 
meant by the ‘ hardest lessons of strength ’ ? ” — 

Indeed it was a difficult question to answer, 
comprising, as it does, that content of soul, 
that is not stoical acquiescence in the inevi- 
table, that patience that can only be learned by 
struggle and self-discipline, the restraint of self. 

I told my son, the essence of that self- 
mastery which I called the hardest lesson of 
strength, always seemed to me held in those 
words of Isaiah the prophet : “ Their strength 
is to sit still,” — to be nothing of self, — all of 
Christ. 

I think he caught my meaning; Hugh was 
always quick to respond to and understand 
what the others sometimes called mother’s 
hidden answers. 


Francis expects a friend to-night, — young 


OUR SAINTS. 


*39 

Lord Campbell ; he is to be with us till Sep- 
tember; Francis acting as his tutor on some 
abstruse subject which the young man is in- 
vestigating, — and in a week we are to have 
another guest, for Grace Ward is coming for 
the midsummer holidays. Our friendship with 
the Wards is still as dear as when it was 
formed, though we meet but seldom. The 
last twelvemonth has been full of trials to 
them. Miss Anna’s frail physical strength 
failed in the autumn, and Mr. Ward’s work 
has pressed harder, while their means of sup- 
port have not increased. There seemed no 
way but to consent to let Grace take the 
place of day-governess offered her by an early 
friend of Miss Anna’s, who has a troop of 
rosy-faced children needing instruction. Grace 
has had good courage for the undertaking, but 
in the late spring, when I was in London with 
Zita, I saw the tired look that was begin- 
ning to steal the light out of her soft hazel 
eyes ; I saw her smiles came just as often as 
they used, but that they faded almost as quick- 
ly as they came. 


OUR SAINTS . 


I40 

It was noting these little things that led 
me to win the promise of this summer-time 
visit. 

Lord Campbell has come ; he arrived last 
night as we expected. 

Why is it that I can not quite explain my- 
self to myself? 

Is a mother’s heart wont to be such a con- 
tradictory thing? one minute pleased to have 
her children fair and beautiful, winning and 
worthy to win admiration, and the next half 
vexed, that they should be admired. 

The young men walked over from the rail- 
way station. We were all out on the lawn as 
they approached. They came by the river 
path ; thus we did not notice them till they 
were close to us, and it was Eulalie who 
espied them first. 

Eulalie, who stood the central figure of our 
group ; she was robed in pure white, her hair 
drawn back from the broad open forehead, 
and her eyes, they shone like stars that night. 
One arm was lifted ; she was reaching up for a 


OUR SAINTS. 


141 

late June rose that crowned the topmost 
branch of a high flowering plant. 

“ I want it,” she said, “ before the dew falls 
on its tender leaves,” — and she smiled, this 
daughter of mine, who had so many thoughts 
that out-winged her words. 

It was that minute the young men, Francis 
and Lord Campbell, joined us, that minute 
that I saw the quick flush mount to the stran- 
ger’s face, the light deepen in his eyes, then, 
that my mother -heart knew how fair my 
Eulalie was, — and that this stranger knew 
it too. 

And, — my own young days, — they never 
seem far away from me, even though I am 
the mother of these tall sons and maidens, and 
somehow, an echo from them came floating 
down the years, and I knew too, as well as if a 
voice had told it, what the look in Arthur 
Campbell’s eyes meant. 

Our second guest has been with us six 
weeks now ; Grace Ward, who is as light of 
heart this holiday-time, as a bird let loose 
from imprisoning cage. 


142 


OUR SAINTS. 


Everything is bright to her, sunshine and 
shadow alike ; when she talks it is like heark- 
ening to a bird sing, there is such a note of 
happiness in her tone ; the smiles that were so 
fleeting in London are abiding now, for truly 
she seems to smile all the time. 

I sat listening to her words this morning, 
as her little hands were busy twining into gar- 
lands for a parish festival, the flowers with 
which Yvo and Britta had filled her lap and 
heaped about her, as she sat on a low stool on 
the broad balcony. 

She was talking to Hugh, who was reaching 
out to her, now one, and then another blos- 
som, as the glance of her eye, the nod of her 
head indicated. 

Francis was listening too, leaning against 
one of the balcony columns that was draped 
with clinging jasmine ; and as he listened, 
idly pulling off and ruthlessly scattering on 
the green-sward the delicate white petals of 
the fragrant blossoms. 

“ Do you remember,” said Grace, “ that 
first time we met, that summer by the sea ? 
Do you remember?” 


OUR SAINTS. 


H3 

What was the instinct that made me, the 
mother, glance from one son to the other as 
the young girl repeated, “ Do you remem- 
ber?” 

How blind I have been ; why, in that sec- 
ond’s glance I read the open secret that was 
stirring in my Francis’ and Hugh’s hearts, — 
and, — yet, all those weeks I had never thought 
of it. — But once read, how much it revealed 
to me; how my heart sank. — Were my sons, 
the boys who had slept in the same cradle, to 
be brought in conflict for the love of Grace 
Ward? 

Was this the reason why, ever since those 
days by the sea, when I had thought them 
but lads, Francis and Hugh had seemed to 
drift apart from one another; was this the 
cause of the unspoken estrangement between 
them ? 

These were undefined queries, even while 
they were whispering in my mind, bringing 
back many events of the past, I heard every 
syllable Grace uttered. 

Her words were like pictures, so glowing in 


OUR SAINTS. 


I44 

warmth and color, that they seemed caught 
from the radiance of last night’s sunset, the 
glory of which had lingered in the west till 
long after the moon rose. 

“ Do you remember,” again she repeated, 
“ how the waters of the Bay sparkled in the 
light that day ; how the blue waves broke on 
the yellow sands where the children were at 
play ; how we found the shells that held the 
sea-songs, and the tiny flowers of the ocean, 
the bits of tangled grass and weed, rosy red 
and deep green, faint pink and rich brown ; 
oh, do you remember?” and she laughed, this 
innocent maiden, with a heart as light as a 
bird’s, as she held out her little hand for the 
flowers Hugh reached toward her. 

And Hugh, — his face was always as bright 
as the sunshine, but at that moment the radi- 
ance of it I can never forget, — and the look 
so like his father’s ! — 

I shut my eyes from the very intensity ot 
memory, and my heart it flew back, far back ; 
for a minute I forgot the years between, — 
and the grave. — I was young again, — young 


OUR SAINTS. 


145 

as the maiden Grace, twining flowers ; I stood 
again in the garden surrounding the old Cha- 
teau, in far-away France, and music seemed to 
fill the air, — and yet, — it was only a whisper- 
ed word, — rose leaves blown from the ladened 
bushes seemed to fall about me ; rose leaves 
carpeting all my path, in a minute, 

“ Past and Present bound in one, 

Did make a garland for my heart.” 

And then Francis moved, — and I was back 
again, — a mother, with sons and daughters 
grown, — a widow, — the mistress of Glentwood 
Hall. 

A minute later I left the young creatures, 
happy with their flowers and their memories. 
I linked my arm into Francis’, and we walked 
together across the lawn to the old oak tree, 
beneath whose shade Zita was teaching a 
group of the parish-school children, a song for 
% the afternoon festival. 

Francis left me there, but I had time for a 
brief word before we parted. 

“ It is high festival day,” I said, “ the mid- 
10 


! 4 6 OUR SAINTS. 

summer festival,” — and though the look on 
Francis’ face was hard and cold, I ventured to 
add, “ ‘ and all festivals are fraternal.’ ” That is 
what makes them so beautiful, I think, — that, 
and the truth, that “ ‘ a festival is not a festi- 
val, unless we are at peace with one an- 
other! ’ ” 

“ Then there will be no festival for me, 
mother,” muttered my poor Francis, jealous 
of his own brother. 

Ah, the children ! I used to think when I 
tucked them up in bed, and when their infant 
voices had softly repeated after mine the 
evening prayer, that my hands and heart were 
as full as a mother’s could be. 

But the childhood-time, — it was noth- 

ing like this present. 

Eulalie came to me last night with a new 
light in her eyes, a new song in her heart, my 
joy-led child. 

She did not say a word, she only clasped 
my hand and nestled her head down on my 
shoulder; but Arthur Campbell had been be- 


OUR SAINTS. 


147 


fore, I knew all about it ; I had given my con- 
sent. 

At last, Zita has spoken; ever since she 
was a child I have known how her heart was 
set on a life of serving others ; I have watch- 
ed for years the patient submission with which 
she has been content to serve in the some- 
what limited sphere of our village, when I 
have known how wide-reaching her sympa- 
thies and desires were. 

Once when I told her this, she replied : 

“ The best I can do 

For the great world, is the same best I can 
For this my world.” 

And I knew she was right ; I knew when 
the time for broader work came, God would 
call her, and now it has come. 

These are dark, anxious days to us ; the 
cloud of war rising in the East is stealing the 
light from many and many an English home. 

Days like those, when my husband fell, are 
brooding again over our land, and though the 
wide sea rolls between us and the battle-field 


I4 8 OUR saints. 

and the cannon’s roar, the carnage is in the 
women’s hearts at home, I think. 

But Zita, what did she ask? 

Yes, I knew it would come, — she too will 
sail away to the land where Hugh is, and 
where my Yvo is to begin his active life as 
surgeon of a newly-formed regiment. 

She will go, like a Sister of Charity, to bind 
up wounds, to soothe dying men, to whisper 
of home here, and there ; to treasure and send 
back last messages of remembrance and peace 
to stricken hearts. 

Not one of these olive branches of hope 
and comfort will my Zita let fall by the way ; 
like Noah’s dove she will waft them safely 
across the floods of great waters, — waters ot 
sorrow. 

She has gone, — she only waited long enough 
to kiss our Eulalie on her wedding-day. 

The old Hall begins to seem deserted, — my 
nest is emptying fast, — only Francis, Maud, and 
Britta with me now ; and it was full six months 
after Zita left before Francis came home. 


OUR SAINTS. 


149 

It was only a passing trouble, he said, that 
brought him, only that he needed rest for a 
^hne ; a mere mist that seemed to gather be- 
fore his eyes, like the fleecy clouds of a sum- 
mer’s day ; rest would cure him. 

Life had continued brilliant to Francis as 
far as literary success could make it. The 
kings of criticism in well-nigh every walk of 
scholarship had held out the golden sceptre 
to my son. 

The unrest of his soul, the bitter wrench of 
envy, that knew Grace to choose Hugh rather 
than himself, had only served to stimulate 
him into action, — sorrow and disappointment 
never did paralyze one of my children. 

But what of that mist before his eyes? 

The London surgeons, the specialists most 
famed for knowledge in the working of that 
wonder in the face of man, — the eye, — were 
baffled by it ; they shook their heads gravely, 
— rest was all they prescribed. But the mist 
meanwhile increased ; could it be that my 
Francis, whose eyes had held such a far-reach- 
ing look of yearning after higher things ever 


OUR SAINTS. 


150 

since the days of his babyhood, was to be 
stricken now in the zenith of his manhood 
with blindness? 

What would we do if we knew when life 
began, all it was to hold for our loved ones. 
How could we bear the knowledge? 

In our parish church, yesterday, the old 
church that is like three buildings in one, first 
the tower, then the nave, and then the chan- 
cel, always reminding me of the Trinity, — the 

holy Three in One. 

This mystical number three, how it runs 
like parallel lines through so much of our 
knowledge and understanding of many things, 
mind, heart, and soul, — childhood, youth, and 
maturity, — bud, flower, and fruit, — faith, 
hope, and love. — How almost endless are 
these trios, that like music are set to the har- 
mony of the same three-fold note. — 

In our church, I repeat, there was a holy 
service ; my Herbert received his charge, his 
commission to go forth a consecrated minister 
of the Lord. And his young heart did not 


OUR SAINTS. 


151 

faint, though the task was mighty he under- 
took ; his voice did not falter as he made the 

sacred vows. And then, filling the church 

like heavenly music, sounded the soft, low 
notes of the organ, and tender and sweet as 
though it were an angel’s whisper, Maud’s voice, 
singing the Amen to Herbert’s consecration, 
the verily “ so be it.” 

“ A sacred burden is the life ye bear, 

Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, 

Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly, 

Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, 

But onward, upward, till the goal you win. 

God guard you, and God guide you on your way, 
Young pilgrim warrior, who sets forth to-day.” 

I would fain have had Herbert’s work begin 
in some peaceful rural parish of our own 
county ; but the Master called him elsewhere, 
and it is a crowded, bustling manufacturing 
town where he is located. 

Parting Herbert and Maud, was like part- 
ing a sunbeam, the two had always been so 
closely associated. 

Nevertheless, just as when sunbeams are 


152 


OUR SAINTS. 


parted, they go on shining, so my Herbert 
and Maud possessed each a light of their own 
individuality, that did not grow dim, because 
no longer they could be together in the sweet 
companionship of frequent intercourse. 

A light, that in my Maud’s youth was of 
such tender loveliness, so mild in its radiance ; 
no wonder that no sooner were her charms 
known, than there came a claimant who pick- 
ed this fair flower from my garden. 

Maud’s is a brief story of wedded happi- 
ness and love ; the flowers that bloomed on 
her bridal day had scarcely begun to droop, 
the white lilies and Provence roses were still 
blossoming, the June birds still singing when 
she came back to me with the light of earthly 
joy gone out of her life, — a widow. — 

I have had great anxiety about Hugh. I 
knew from his letters that for a time a change 
had crept over the spirit of my frank, true- 
hearted son, — and now he is at home with me 
again, and has told me about it, and my heart 
is at rest. 


OUR SAINTS. 


153 

His furlough is but brief ; in the autumn he 
must leave us again ; it was only granted that 
his wounded arm might have time to fully re- 
gain its strength ; there is nothing of an in- 
valid in his appearance ; on the contrary, he 
looks strong as a young oak, and brave as a 
young warrior* 

To-morrow, Grace Ward is coming, and be- 
fore he leaves us, Hugh’s wish is that they 
may be married. 

But what was the story he told me, and 
why, now that I know it is my heart at rest ? 

“ I wearied, mother,” he said, “ of the life 
of restraint I led ; I craved merry revelling 
and companionship with others of my age, 
their lives seemed to me 1 one full strain of 
mirth and song and glee,’ — and I yielded. I 
went to their banquets, I drank of the * red 
wine that sparkled in the cup,’ — and when 
once I yielded, the madness of that time well- 
nigh blotted out the thought of home, of you, 
mother, — and Grace, — and then, — there 
came,” t 

But Hugh did not tell me what that then 


OUR SAINTS. 


154 

held, — he only bowed his head on my shoul- 
der and wept, though he was so strong in his 
young manhood, as if he had been a boy 
again. 

“After that,” he presently continued, “the 
spell was broken, and now, — like my father, — 
I am trying to be not only a soldier for my 
country’s honor, but a soldier of the Cross, 
but I fail so.” — 

Do you wonder, after hearing my boy’s tale, 
that my mother-heart was at rest ? 

For, — “is not the true perfection of a man 
the finding out his own imperfections,” — and 
did not those words, “ I fail so,” show me that 
my Hugh was on the high-road to that “ high- 
est perfection any one can attain in this life, 
the being ever increasingly sensible of how 
weak and imperfect he is ? ” 

Grace came as we expected, and when she 
and Hugh parted a month later, they were 
husband and wife. — He left her in my charge ; 
his gentle flower, he called her. I must guard 
her from all sorrow, he said. 


OUR SAINTS. 


155 


I can see him now ; that parting morning ; 
tall and brave, nobler in his bearing than any 
of my sons, — yes, I seem to hear even now 
the clank of the sword by his side ; I can see 
the glitter of the gold embroidery of his uni- 
form as he crossed the room, and laid his 
hand on Francis’ shoulder, saying in a voice 
tremulous with feeling: “You will be a bro- 
ther to her, Francis.” 

And Francis, he answered, “Yes.” 

Which of my two sons was the truest hero 
then? The brave soldier-lad, crowned with 
honor for valiant service done in defence of 
his country? or the pale man, with figure 
bowed for one so young, with eyes clouded to 
the light of this world’s beauty? — Which was 
the greatest hero ? 

The Bible says, “ he that ruleth his own 
spirit is greater than he that taketh a 
city.” — 

Do you wonder I caught that hour, an echo, 
faint and Iqw, like a chime of pealing belte 
ringing in some distant church-tower, a note 
of the self- mastery, that was beginning to ring 


OUR SAINTS. 


I 5 6 

in my Francis’ soul, — and, j^-mastery is the 
key-note to saint-likeness. — Do you wonder I 
was glad ? 

The old Hall would be a dreary place now 
save for Britta, my happy-hearted maiden, 
who could no more help being glad than the 
sun can help shining. 

Truly it seems as though some prophetic 
guiding led me, when I chose to call this my 
last-born child after the old Irish ancestor and 
saint. — Britta, — our shining light, yes, she was 
well named. 

Can it be she too, my youngest one, is going 
to spread her wings and fly away, — oh, my 
birdlings! my birdlings ! — 

She has gone, our Britta, gone to sing and 
to smile, to comfort and to cheer other hearts 
than ours, — and again the number of my nest- 
lings is lessened ; only two now, Francis and 
Maud, with me. 

For Grace, and the sturdy little lad named 
for Francis, have sailed away over the blue 


OUR SAINTS. 157 

sea, the young wife loves so well, — sailed 
away, that the soldier-father may kiss his 
baby son. 

Zita and Yvo, how they also will welcome 
them. 


XVIII. 


I WQNDER, kind eyes and gentle hearts, 
that read this simple story of a family, can 
you make sense of these clustered extracts 
from a mother’s journal ? 

Can you thread a daisy chain, like the chil- 
dren do with the flowers, of these fragments 
that strew the pages just turned? — 

As the children thread the daisies that peep 
out like smiles from every hedge-row and lane, 
they-say, those happy English lads and las- 
sies, “ Look the flowers, they have an eye,” and 
so they call them, Day’s-eye, and they tell 
how the sun kissed those golden centers, till 
lo ! they became golden hearts, in the wee, 
crimson-tipped things. 

Like the English children, will you say, oh, 
kind readers : “ Lo ! these extracts, simple 
though they be, naught more than glimpses 
(158) 


OUR SAINTS. 


1 59 

of home and family life, yet have eyes of 
meaning, hearts of love.” 

Will you have patience to go on, and read 
more in detail my mother's tracing of the 
saint - like echoes life and its experience 
brought out and revealed in her children’s his- 
tories, as the wind brings out music from the 
chords of a wind-swept harp, — echoes it 
needed the wind of life, and the years to stir. 
— I find a budget of these memories still 
waiting to be untied ; shall we turn their 
pages and read them together? — 











































PART SECOND. 


“ Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the 
kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn , for 
they shall be co7nforted. Blessed are the meek, for they 
shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which hunger 
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. 
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called 
the children of God. Blessed are they who are perse- 
cuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven." 

“ Great indeed is their reward, for it is no less than 
the very beatific vision to contemplate and adore. 
That supreme moral beauty , of which all earthly 
beauty, all nature, all art, all poetry, all music, are but 
phantoms and parables, hints and hopes , dim reflected 
rays of the clear light of that everlasting day, of 
which it is written — that ‘ the city had no 7ieed of the 
sun , neither of the moon, to shine in it ; for the glory 
of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light 
thereof.' " 


Kingsley. 


I. 

EXTRACTS FROM MY MOTHER’S REMINIS- 
CENCES. 

TT is a different thing to pen the stories of 
men and women, — as my sons and daugh- 
ters are now, — than it was to write of them, 
while they were haloed by youth, even if it 
were late-lingering youth to the older ones. 

And yet, it is an easier task for a mother to 
undertake than it would be for any one else ; 
for a mother’s understanding and decipher- 
ing of much that seems unintelligible in her 
children’s hearts and characters, is something 
like an “ electric battery answering to electric 
battery, with a constant interchange of bright 
and thrilling currents.” 

And I feel prompted to continue these rec- 
ords, at least so far as the clearly bringing 

out in them what I call the decisive chapters 

(163) 


164 OUR SAINTS. 

in my children’s lives, — the hours which set 
seal to their claim to saint-hood, which caught 
up the echo of it that had sounded at inter- 
vals on from childhood to youth, and that 
now in maturity rings out a clear peal of vic- 
tory won, — victory over self. 

As I use the word saint, and apply it to my 
group, I feel there may be many good men 
and women who would shrink back from its 
use. — And I would distinctly state, and have 
it understood, even though the bells of vic- 
tory have rung loud and clear in my children’s 
lives, they are men and women still. 

Men and women who will go on stumbling, 
striving, ofttimes failing as they tread the 
pilgrim’s upward path, till the gate at last 
opens, and they pass within, — within, to join 
the great company of the “ holy ones of God. 
The heroes and heroines, who kept themselves 
unspotted from .the world, they who have 
washed their robes, and made them white in 
the blood of the Lamb, which is the spirit of 
^//'-sacrifice.” 

But why do I use the words decisive chap- 


OUR SAINTS. 


165 

ters? Because, while I firmly believe every 
event in our lives is a thread in the seamless 
robe, every day a part of the full rounded 
years it takes to complete them, I also be- 
lieve, to all of us there come hours, in which 
we make decisions that stay with us, an 
abiding presence, a controlling influence, all 
through the after years of earthly life, and on 
through the years that are numbered, a thou- 
sand of them but as one day, — on into the 
great unending Hereafter. — I believe too, it is 
not always with some great sorrow or tempta- 
tion that these test-hours come. I believe 
sometimes it is no more than the acceptance 
of some humble daily burden, or the resist- 
ance of a temptation that is so subtle, so un- 
defined, we scarcely grasp its full meaning, 
and yet by that inward law of right and 
wrong, that God plants in the heart of every 
man and woman, we know it must be crushed 
out, just as we know the tiny spark that falls 
almost unheeded amid the dry leaves, or 
drought-parched grass of a forest must be 
crushed out, because tliough it is no more 


OUR SAINTS. 


1 66 

than a spark, it holds the heart of a flame 
that can lay low the goodly trees, and burn 
and scorch every green twig that crowns their 
topmost branches. 

And it is the record of such test-hours that 
came to my sons and daughters, as they come 
to us all, that I want to catch and hold. 

Though he numbered in age among the 
last half of my eight, it is of Herbert’s con- 
flict-hour I will tell first. 

But before I detail how the conflict of self- 
mastery, for the sake of a Higher than self, 
was waged in my gentle son’s soul, I want 
to turn back to the old fancy of my youthful 
years. 

Those years which brought my children to 
me. 

The special fancy I refer to, was the giving 
of names previously borne by saints of old, 
and the choosing of gems, — that I wanted to 
be amulets of meaning, — according to the 
months that were joy-marked by the coming 
of these precious gifts, — my children ! 

Yet, their names, and the gems, were to me 


OUR SAINTS. 

something like the upper waves of the sea, 
while deep down in my heart, like the calm 
waters that flow below the visible, there were 
flowing deeper channels and desires for my 
children ; and while I chose their names, their 
gems, in my heart I chose, too, for each child 
a verse from the benediction verses of that 
sacred garland of Blessings, in which is re- 
vealed the “conditions of life and character, 
which make it possible for the Lord to give 
to men the happiness He would give to 
all” 

Strangely enough, though I had been reared 
in a creed environed with saints’ days, never 
till the very last observance of “ All Saints ” 
in our parish church, did I realize the full sig- 
nificance of my choosing verses from the 
beatitudes for my children. 

And yet how could it have escaped me, 
when they are the Gospel portion set apart 
for that day, and as we read them, we know 
the great multitude whom we contemplate, 
the innumerable company of angels, the spirits 
of just men made perfect, when on earth be- 


OUR SAINTS. 


1 68 

longed to the army whom no man can number, 
the Blessed. 

Well may we 

“ Yield them reverence, yea, bless the ages 
By their great deeds and sufferings sanctified.” 

But we may remember too, that, 

“ Still other names, on God’s resplendent pages, 

By theirs are fit to be inscribed beside.” 

And here, just here, I find justification for 
calling my sons and daughters saints, for, tell 
me, is it not true that here on earth 

“ Saints are with us in the lowly places 

Of toil, and tears, and poverty, and sin ? 

“ They move in common ways, unpraised, unheeded. 
Accepting work that nearest to them lies ; 

Zealous to serve where most their help is needed. 
Unconscious angels in an earthly guise. 


The tasks of love they patiently fulfill, 
Nursing the weak, and comforting the weary — 


Naught matters if their duty well is done, 
Living each day as pilgrims and as strangers, 


OUR SAINTS. 


169 


They are content if God’s applause is won. 


. . . Self-subdued. — 

u O ye holy ones, ye make our households dearer ; 
Ye consecrate our hearths, — 

Ye bring the unveiled world of glory nearer. 

And Christ to doubting, troubled spirits show.” 


II. 


MORE EXTRACTS. 

A ND now, on to my Herbert and his trial- 
test. 

It was to fill a curacy in a manufacturing 
town that he left us, the resident incumbent 
of which was an old man ; thus the care and 
responsibility of parish work was much in- 
trusted to Herbert. 

The night before he went from home I 
gave him, — as I had each of my children when 
they went out from me to meet the world as 
independent men and women, — a tiny golden 
cross, on which was engraved the “ blessed 
verse ” my heart had chosen for him in his 
infancy. 

It is strange the fitness with which in Her- 
bert’s case, and in fact in the lives of all my 
children, these chosen benediction verses seem 

specially applicable to their needs. 

(170) 


OUR SA/JVTS. iyi 

Herbert’s is, — “ Blessed are the poor in 
spirit,” and how he has needed to pray to be 
kept humble and lowly in heart, there has 
been so much in his life to engender high 
thoughts of self. As he read the words, re- 
peating them aloud, he smiled and asked : 

“Tell me, mother, why you chose them for 
me; tell me who are the poor in spirit?” 

Well enough he knew, this son of mine, who, 
young as he was then, was deeply versed in 
the meaning of the holy Gospel. 

Yet I could not say nay, when again he 
asked, so I answered : 

“ The poor in spirit, Herbert, are they, I 
think, who know and feel their own utter 
poverty, their entire dependence upon their 
Lord, their nothingness without Him. They 
who know ‘ if there be any good in their lives, 
it did not originate in themselves, but is a gift 
from God ’ ; and thus their consciousness of 
imparting holy thoughts, precious counsel to 
others, or of active usefulness in the Master’s 
service, wakens in them no self-love or self- 
admiration, but 1 it causes in their minds an 


172 


OUR SAINTS. 


ever wakeful certainty of the goodness and 
the presence of God, and in their hearts a 
foretaste of the happiness and blessedness of 
heaven.’ ” 

This was the substance of my talk with 
Herbert. Full seven years he remained with 
his first charge, — seven years marked by much 
of perplexity and hard work, but with much 
of blessedness too, for many a rough man, 
many a hard heart, many a weak and sorrow- 
ful woman, led by Herbert’s teachings, heard 
the voice of the Shepherd speaking to their 
souls, bidding them come to Him for rest, — 
and he had led them into the green pastures, 
and beside the still waters of trust in Christ. 

It had been a humble post of service, 
according to this world’s estimate of position ; 
and according to that estimate, as those seven 
years ended, a future bright as the landscape 
when the sun breaks through the rifted clouds 
of a gray, leaden sky, seemed to dawn upon 
my son. 

For at that time one of the most impor- 
tant beneficiaries in Devonshire came into 


OUR SAINTS. 


173 

Arthur Campbell’s gift again, and he straight- 
way offered it to Herbert. 

We all urged his acceptance, and scarcely 
had two months flitted away before he was 
settled in the old Rectory that was within an 
hour’s drive of Campbell Castle, Eulalie’s 
home. 

Maud went to him for the settling, and on 
her return the description she gave Francis 
and myself of Herbert’s surroundings were 
like a series of bright pictures. I know the 
region well, having so often visited Eulalie ; 
and as I listened to Maud, memory gave re- 
ality to her words, as she told of her arrival, 
and of how Herbert had met her on the bridge 
of Shaugh, which derives its name from Shaugh 
church-tower, and how they had there sent 
the carriage on, while they walked the re- 
maining distance to the old Rectory nestled 
among the trees, and how like a great wall of 
protection, just beyond the bridge, — a modern 
erection of hewn granite that separated the 
“ sister waters” that rush tumultuously be- 
neath it, — uprose an almost perpendicular hill 


174 


OUR SAINTS. 


that terminated in a rugged peak, which 
caught the first beams of the rising sun, and 
the last rays of its setting. 

And then Maud had gone on to tell of the 
applause and favor Herbert’s eloquent words 
had won from the many titled families who 
frequented that parish church, and of the good- 
will with which the humbler folk regarded 
him, — and she had smiled a tender smile that 
held a hint of another joy dawning for my son. 

The letters that came to us from Herbert 
for weeks after were as bright as the colors of 
autumn flowers. We read them aloud. They 
never contained aught that was meant for my 
mother-eye alone. They were pleasant diary- 
like letters, that took us into the heart of 
Herbert’s parish work ; we came to know and 
speak of more than one of his parishioners as 
though they were friends of our own ; we 
shared the little trials that now and then 
sprang up in his path ; we joyed in his joys, 
and we were proud and happy when we heard 
of some sermon more than usually well writ- 
ten and well received. 


OUR SAINTS. 


175 

Maud was wont to say, it seemed to her as 
though Herbert was like a gardener who 
tended the royal rose, the stately lily, the 
rare blooms of tropical clime, yet tended, too, 
the lowly growing plants, for the people of 
his charge were so divided into two classes, 
the rich and the poor, the high-born and the 
lowly. 

Summer had gone, autumn was waning be- 
fore I visited Herbert in his new home. I went 
alone ; Francis seldom left the Hall, and Maud 
remained with him. It was nearing twilight 
when we reaphed the Rectory ; driving across 
the bridge, the shadows from Shaugh Hill fell 
heavy and dark across our way, and the ed- 
dies and rapids of the swiftly-flowing water 
that rushed so wildly beneath the arches, 
looked leaden and gloomy. It was a desolate 
evening; rain had begun to fall an hour be- 
fore ; the wind blew stormy from the east, 
shaking ruthlessly from tree bough and 
bushy branch, the yellow leaves, that had 
been ready for a week past to fall, at the first 
rough breath. 


OUR SAINTS. 


176 

As we passed through the Rectory gate, 
and the lights from the windows, where the 
curtains were drawn back, flashed out, it 
was a weird scene they lit up, sombre and 
mournful. 

But when once I had stepped across the 
threshold of the old house, all was cheer and 
brightness. 

I can hardly describe the sense of comfort, 
that like the warm, cordial grasp of a friendly 
hand, seemed to greet one on entering this 
Rectory home. 

It was an old house, a perfect type of what 
we are wont to call English comfort, and yet, 
when I try to cage into tangible description, 
wherein this pleasantness consisted, I am at 
a loss. In truth, I think it came from that 
undefined sense that pervaded every nook 
and corner of it with a certain peacefulness, as 
though could the mute walls tell the life-sto- 
ries they had enclosed during the many, many 
years since first the Rectory was called home, 
their tales would all have been of quiet family 
histories, — histories in which, perhaps, many a 


OUR SAINTS. 


1 77 

time hearts had beat fast with sorrow, as well 
as throbbed and pulsed with joy, yet they had 
ever been brooded over, and sheltered by that 
abiding Presence, the recognized Peace, that 
holds sway in a home where Love is the 
foundation-stone. 

Herbert had much to tell me ; we talked 
long and late. He had a picture to show me, 
too, and after looking at it I seemed to bridge 
the winter months that must elapse before 
that sweet, calm face would greet my Her- 
bert’s coming in and going out, with the smile 
of a young wife’s welcome. 

It was not a beautiful face that he showed 
me, and yet I loved to gaze on the dear 
brown eyes that looked from it, with such 
trust and peace in their depths, — and the 
half smile that played around the rested curve 
of the lips, had something almost holy in it, 
as if it came from thoughts that were far- 
reaching, and tender, and true. 

That being true in one’s thoughts as well 
as words, so gives the angel-look to a face, I 
think. 


12 


OUR SAINTS. 


178 

“ This is Mary Gordon,” Herbert said, add- 
ing, “ Do you think her home will seem pleas- 
ant to her, mother? ” 

And he stirred the coals slumbering in the 
grate, till they flashed out a hundred sparks, 
and flame-jets, that lit up into radiance every 
corner of the room, — and then we.talked again 
of his future, and as we talked our hearts drew 
close together. 

The love of a good, true, noble-souled man 
like my Herbert, for this woman of his choice, 
was such a sacred thing, I could not keep the 
grateful tears back, as reverently he told me 
of it. 

Weeks followed that night, all in memory 
beautiful to me as the beautiful dreams of 
childhood. 

My Herbert was loved so well by the parish 
folk, and Eulalie and Arthur had such pleas- 
ant words to tell of the good he was doing, 
not only in the cottage homes, but among the 
.dwellers in the stately mansions that lifted 
turreted walls and gabled roofs, from many a 
park enclosure all th^t country-side over. 


OUR SAINTS. 


179 

Often I talked with him of that verse, “ the 
poor in spirit,” for he needed to keep it ever 
in mind, surrounded as he was by temptation 
to self-congratulation and approbation, — more 
than once I said to myself, it is through this 
love and approval, which is scattered in my 
son’s path, as thickly as roses on the pathway 
of a happy bride, that his trial test will come. 

Yes, I said to myself, before he knows, the 
seeds of self as chief, will up-spring in his soul, 
and, weak of faith that I was, I watched trem- 
blingly for the first breath of some strong wind, 
some cloudy hour, in which the lamp of hu- 
mility in his heart would burn low. 

But it was not thus the trial came. No, the 
stillness and the repose of the meek was not 
disturbed in Herbert’s heart, no cloud came 
between that and God to shut away the fall- 
ing of heavenly dew that refreshed the tender 
plant of humility. 

Have you ever thought of this deep mean- 
ing of the dew, that links it with the meek in 
heart ; ever thought as you gazed on some 
fair blossom, or wide-spread grassy plain of 


OUR SAINTS. 


180 

far-reaching meadow all impearled in the 
morning dew, how the grass -blades and the 
flowers are well-nigh hidden by the noiseless 
jewels that silently, as a blessing, fall in the 
peaceful night, and are thankful to be hidden 
by these God-sent dew-drops, just as the lowly 
of soul are thankful to be cast out of sight 
for the sake of the Master’s honor, just as 
when His refreshment falls on their souls, 
they shine with all the brighter glow for His 
glory’s sake. 

It was nearing Yule-time when I parted 
from Herbert. I left him on a December 
morning that was all unlike the November 
evening of my arrival, for the air was clear as 
the blue of a cloudless winter’s day could 
make it. The rushing waters below the bridge 
were sparkling, and as full of play as they 
had been of storm, when first I beheld them. 
Shaugh’s great Hill was capped with a crown 
of snow on its topmost peak ; the hedge of 
Holly that had looked so dark and gloomy as 
we drove up the carriage-way on the night of 
my arrival, was glossy and shining in its deep 


OUR SAINTS. jgj 

mid-winter green, and scarlet tipped with the 
Christmas-tide berries. 

The day appointed for Herbert’s marriage 
was a spring morning in early May, and be- 
fore the month had waned, he and his gentle 
bride were at home in the old Rectory. 

Meanwhile, I watched the increasing ap- 
proval that crowned his work with many an 
anxious foreboding, but he continued humble- 
minded as a child. The attentions he received 
never seemed to rouse the least consciousness 
in him that he had out-stepped others of his 
age ; self seemed all forgotten as he went 
about his duties ; it was a time of great peace 
and joy all through those summer days. 

And then, as suddenly as the change from 
his first parish to the idyl-like life of his sec- 
ond charge, came another call to my son, — 
and he was brought face to face with a decis- 
ion, the making of which, tried as it had 
never been tried before, the reality of his 
consecration to the cause of the Master he 
served. 


182 


OUR SAINTS. 


A decision which admitted of no delay ; the 
hour that brought it must hold its answer. 

Mary told me of that morning’s experience, 
even to the least detail, and the memory of it 
has stayed in my mind ever since, like a 
picture. 

It was the last of the summer days, a sweet 
tranquil morning, so still in the Rectory gar- 
den, there seemed no sound save the hum- 
ming of the bees ; all things else, even to the 
birds, were mute. 

As she and Herbert passed out of the gar- 
den and looked up to Shaugh Hill, the rug- 
ged, craggy peak was silver-crested, in the 
softened yellow glow that rested like a gossa- 
mer veil before the deep blue of the sky, 
against which the outline of the hill was 
sharply defined. 

The waters of the river went dancing on 
their way, murmuring a low song, that they 
did not hear till they stood on the bridge. 

They were standing 4here when still a far- 
off sound, they heard the post-boy’s horn ; 
they waited for his approach, there, in the 


OUR SAINTS. 183 

sweet morning, with the great hill looking 
down on them, and the waters below chant- 
ing their melody. 

There were many missives in the post-boy’s 
saddle-bags that day ; the Rectory pouch was 
full. Mary reached up her little hands to re- 
ceive it, and Herbert exchanged a word of 
greeting and good-will with the lad before he 
started on his way. 

And their trial had come ! — but they did 
not know it, — even though Mary held the let- 
ter that was to lay like some tangible thing 
this decision at my Herbert’s feet. 

In their happy ignorance they lingered on 
the bridge, full five minutes, looking down at 
the waves, and off up the winding road by 
which the post-boy had gone laden with the 
white-winged, sorrow and joy-full missives 
that every post-boy carries. 

No wonder that those lads who go about 
day by day in this service of carrying messa- 
ges from heart to heart, come to have a look 
of kindness on their faces, a note of sympathy 
in their voices, as though in a certain way 


OUR SAINTS. 


184 

they felt a personal interest in every one of 
the many letters they carry in that strange 
meeting-place of widely differing sentiments 
— a mail-bag. 

How they are crowded in side by side ; 
messages of love, words of bitterness, tidings 
of grief, tidings of joy, heralders of smiles, 
heralders of tears, side by side, like flowers 
and weeds, sunshine and shadow, night and 
day. 

A letter from Yvo, Herbert said, as twenty 
minutes later he turned the key in the pouch 
and emptied its contents on his study table, 
and his voice rang glad and clear; news from 
this absent brother was always so welcome. 

Without delay the seal was broken ; Yvo’s 
writing was firm and bold, easy to read, and 
it covered but half a page. 

“ Dear Herbert : 

“The work presses sorely; the men are 
dying by scores ; can you come to our help ? 
come and tell these poor fellows the ‘ good 
news from Heaven to the worst of sinners.’ 


OUR SAINTS. j 85 

If you come, it must be without delay. The 
Bishop of Calcutta writes by this mail to sub- 
mit your name as successor to , so all 

Diocesan arrangements will be made if your 
consent is won.” 

Herbert never spoke as he read the words, 
he only put his arm around Mary’s slender 
form and drew her close to him. 

And there, — in the silence, — alone with his 
God, — and his wife, my Herbert stood at last 
confronted with the supreme hour of his life, 

the hour which laid “ the axe at the root 

of the tree ” of entire consecration to Christ’s 
service, — and, — my son’s faith bore the test, — 
though the struggle was hard. 

“ We will go, Mary,” he said presently, 
“ some one else can fill our place here, but not 
many can go there and enter right in to the 
inner circle of the work as I can ; with Yvo 
and Zita understanding the very needs of 
those brave, battle- wounded, fever- stricken 
soldier-lads, — yes, we will go.” 

And then for a brief time the dear picture 
of home-happiness, earthly good, his life of 


OUR SAINTS. 


1 86 

peaceful, earnest usefulness, and calm content 
came like a full-tided wave flooding his heart 
and mind with the sense of all his present 
held, — and the young wife, this gently, deli- 
cately reared woman ; had he a right to take 
her from home and friends, had he a right for 
her sake to sacrifice the comforts and happy 
interests that clustered around their present 
garden of labor, and to go forth to toil in the 
dreary field of work offered him in Yvo’s brief 
call, — “ Come and help us,” and by a letter — 
that at first had been overlooked — from the 
Bishop, saying if it was his will to go, — the 
way was open. 

It was Mary, — this Herbert told me — who 
saw the look of indecision that suddenly 
flashed up into his eyes, — Mary, who was 
silent, as he went through the great struggle 
in which self was conquered. 

Mary, the young wife, who nestled closer to 
his side, who laid her little hand in gentlest 
touch against his flushed cheek ; she, who 
later on whispered, “ Christ said : 

“ ‘ Sell thy goods, 

Give to the poor, and taking up thy cross 


OUR SAINTS. 


1 8 7 


Follow thou Me, and thou be sure shalt have 
Treasure in heaven.’ ” 

After that, all questioning was at an end. 

Two weeks later, a little company of men 
and women, with tears in their eyes, but deep 
peace in their hearts, stood on the pier at 
Blackwall. 

And as we stood there, like a ray of light 
out from the shadow of the huge, well-armed 
vessel at anchor in the offing, a tiny boat 
darted across the silvery path of the waves, — 
and then, — more tears, — more prayers in the 
hearts, — and the little boat sped again across 
the sunlit water on into the shadow of the 
vessel. 

Half an hour later, loud were the cheers 
that greeted the upheaving of that vessel’s 
anchor ; and then slowly, but surely, it drop- 
ped down the river. 

Smaller and smaller grew the two figures, 
my Herbert and his Mary, as Maud and I 
watched them through our blinding tears, till 
at last we could descry them no more, — they 
had gone. 


88 


OUR SAINTS. 


My Herbert had met and stood the test. 
“ He had had a brave victory over his ene- 
my,” self, — “ let Him grant that dwelleth 

above, that we fare no worse when we come 
to be tried than he.” 


III. 


r AM half tempted to omit the pages 
-*■ which follow close on to my mother’s de- 
tailed account of how dear Herbert by his full 
surrender of j^-pl easing, when God’s service 
demanded ^//'-sacrifice, caught up the echo, 
and repeated in modern life the spirit of the 
ancient life of the Saint Herbert, for whom he 
was named. 

That early 'Herbert, of whom the record 
tells, “ his fervor was extraordinary, enabling 
him by the grace of God, to overcome evil 
with good ; the man who lived in such near- 
ness to the petition of the ‘ Our Father 
prayer,’ that his every deed was pervaded with 
a sense of the heavenly Father-hood that made 
all with whom he came in contact his broth- 
ers and sisters.” 

Yes, I am tefnpted to omit the following 

(189) 


OUR SAINTS. 


I90 

pages, for they must take me back to that 
darkest time of my life, the months closely 
following my young husband’s death. 

Yes, darkest, for though my heart has never 
ceased to ache with loneliness, I learned long 
ago that there are degrees in sorrow, just as 
there are varying shades in darkness. 

I think I have learned, too, — only my weak 
heart so often fails and disappoints me when 
I think I have attained an abiding knowledge 
of some precious truth, — that this is because, 
as in the sky, so in the firmament of God’s 
consolation and truth, there are stars that 
only shine in midnight gloom, — others that 
belong to the early eventide, when the dark- 
ness is nothing more than twilight dimness, 
and still others that shine only when night is 
nearing dawn. 

Be this as it may, let but the soul when it 
» beholds the stars of Holy Comfort say, as 
Jacob said, — “ This is God’s host ” — and there 
will be a light in the heart that never goes 
out. 

Do you remember? how Jacob called the 


OUR SAINTS. 


I 9 I 

name of that place Mahanaim, the “double 
camp,” for there the angels of God met him. 

I said I would fain not copy the following 
pages, — and yet, would I want to leave my- 
self and the record of myself out of my moth- 
er’s memories ? 

And it is sweet to me that this account 
penned by mother when I was in my woman- 
hood, comes so close to her words of Herbert, 
we have ever been so much to one another, 
and now his great love for Mary his wife, only 
seems to add to his tenderness for me. 

But I am not to fill my paper with my own 
words, but with my mother’s, so I turn again 
to her journal. 


My Maud, how unlike the faith-test that 
has come to try the trust of her heart, is to 
the discipline life has brought to my other 
daughters. 

No great masterful work like Zita’s, no dis- 
cipline of continued joy and prosperity like 
Eulalie, no sunny, love-bounded, flower-strewn 
path like Britta, — but a glimpse of the highest 


OUR SAINTS. 


I92 

earthly happiness, brief as the hour of dawn, 
— and then years of quiet, patient doing of 
the simple duties of home-life, cheering her 
mother’s heart, being eyes for Francis, render- 
ing tender ministries to the parish folk, as 
their needs require, and year after year re- 
peating these same simple duties, this is 

the record of Maud’s outward life, since she 
came back to me a widow. 

And yet, spite the monotonous routine of 
these years, her spirit is as fresh as the spirit 
of any of her sisters, seeming something like 
the brook in the meadow, that keeps fresh 
and green the grassy banks between which its 
waters flow, like a silver .thread. 

Yes, Maud seems possessed of a perpetual 
fountain of spiritual freshness, that makes all 
her duties, humble though they be, sweet “ as 
brooks in the way.” 

And' of humble duties, there is never any 
lack in this world of ours, to the heart that is 
willing to seek them, the hand willing to un- 
dertake them. 

Thus my Maud, though her life holds none 


OUR SAINTS. 


193 

of the strong, bright colors of active service, 
brilliant deeds, generous charity, which marks 
the outward lives of her sisters, is no less an 
artist than they are, for is she not working 
out a fair life-picture ? and the “ highest of all 
art is the art of living well, — the beauty of 
leaving in the place that knows one the rec- 
ord of a well-spent life,” hence we can all 

be artists ! however humble our sphere. 

Have I told — when I chose Herbert’s verse 
in his infancy, I chose for Maud the one next 
it, — “ Blessed are they that mourn, for they 
shall be comforted.” 

And as I chose it, I remember my heart 
shrank back from the word mourn, — I did not 
want sorrow to touch my child, even if comfort 
were to follow, — and her dear, earnest little 
baby face told me that the comforting to her 
would never be forgetting; even though in 
these lives of ours, we are so like travelers, 
now in the valley, now on the hill-top. 

And then I remember I thought of the 
deeper meaning of that word mourn, which 
pointed to spiritual mourning, for errors, 

13 


OUR SAINTS. 


I94 

doubts, sin, and darkness, and opened out 
into the blessed comfort promised to those 
“ who mourn for these things, not for their 
external consequences, but for their soul’s 
sake.” 

After thinking thus, I was glad I chose the 
verse for Maud, as I have been ever since. 
And now I would fain lay my hand on the 
hour which held the key-note to Maud’s pres- 
ent life of tender blessedness, — and I date it 
back to such a simple thing. 

It was not long after she came home to me, 
her heart was very sad, the brightness gone 
out of it, for Maud had loved her young hus- 
band with the intensity of a quiet, reserved 
nature, that when once it opens the doors of 
its heart, opens them so wide. 

The courtship of these two young things 
had been to me even more of a poem than 
Eulalie’s and Hugh’s, or than later on Britta’s 
was. 

Philip Murray was an orphan ; he had led 
a lonely life ; he was not one to easily make 
friends, and this fact bound him and Herbert 


OUR SAINTS. 195 

closer together, from the days at Oxford, 
where their friendship was formed. 

It was there at Oxford that Maud first met 
Philip, but I will not trace the steps of their 
love-story, enough, there seemed no obstacle 
to their wedding young, and I let my Maud 
go forth on her marriage day with no anxious 
thought in my heart; I could trust her to 
Philip. 

Their wedding trip was to the Continent. 
Annice accompanied Maud as temporary maid 
for the month they were to be absent ; thus 
she was with Maud at that time of bewilder- 
ing, sudden grief, for Philip was only alarm- 
ingly ill a brief twenty-four hours ; it was a 
sudden cold and congestion ; its cause they 
could trace to no exposure. 

Twenty-four hours, and she numbered them 
as they passed, my poor child, — for the phy- 
sician, a kindly man, told her the flame of life 
would burn no longer, — and yet she watched 
Philip with hope all through those hours ; she 
was too young to despond at the first sorrow, 
— but Annice knew. 


ig6 OUR SAINTS. 

But as I said I would not trace the growth 
of Maud and Philip’s love during their sun- 
shine time, neither will I trace the record of 

those sad, sad days, — their midnight time, 

after which Maud came back to me. From 
the first she was gentle and calm, — too calm, 
— and I knew though she had been tried as the 
gold is tried by fire, yet there must come to her 
an experience in which she must stoop and 
take up voluntarily the patient bearing of the 
cross of life, which now she submitted to, — 
like so many another sorrower, — because she 
could not help it, — and as I said before, this 
test-hour came in such a simple way. 

We sat together out on the lawn on the 
rustic seat, beneath the shadow of the oak ; it 
was a quiet hour, as quiet as the duties that 
had filled our day, and that had filled the 
days of many a week and month by-gone with 
the little things that were such trifles in the 
doing. 

Well I recollect that that special day had 
held for Maud, nothing more than the gather- 
ing of a handful of fresh flowers which she 


OUR SAINTS. 


I97 

gave a weary, tired-faced woman, who came 
to the Hall on some humble errand, the 
reading column after column from the Times 
and Gazette to Francis, the teaching for an 
hour the clumsy fingers of the little maids 
in the parish school, to conquer the intrica- 
cies of hem and over-hand stitch, the writ- 
ing of a letter or two ; these were all, except 
the rendering of the slight services which she 
was ever watchful to render to me, her mother, 
— and she was tired ; it all seemed but little 
worth, — she was lonely, — her heart ached, — 
she wearied for the touch of the hand so cold, 
but once so caressing ; she wanted, poor child, 
to lay her head down on her young husband’s 
shoulder, and cry her sorrow out, — she want- 
ed to hear his voice, even if only one whisper 
of it. 

I knew how she felt, — for I, too, had felt 
this longing for a touch, and a tone that 
would hush the fever of sorrow throbbing and 
throbbing in my heart, — soothe like some 
balm of sweet healing, the weary, weary, end- 
less heart-ache. 


I 9 8 OUR saints. 

And, — for she was not always patient those 
days, my gentle Maud, — neither is she now, 
after long years of discipline, her eyes can 
flash still, roses mount into her pale cheeks, 
and her quiet voice utter words not always 
well chosen ; and so it will be till the end, — 
and I do not regret this, for it is the very 
struggle to attain patience, that ma"kes the 
strength of self-mastery that sounds the saint- 
like echo in my Maud’s life, — as in the lives 
of my other daughters and sons. 

I find myself lingering so in these latter 
records, it is well I draw near their conclusion, 
for like the old woman that I am, I grow prosy 
with my wandering into the paths of thought, 
that open out to me from every sentence that 
holds a memory of my children’s lives and 
conflicts. 

Now resolutely I return to Maud. 

“ It all seems so useless,” she said to me ; 
“ my time filled with the doing of nothing 
really worth accomplishing ; nothing but pal- 
try duties, — my life is spoiled, — all the beauty 
and joy crushed out of it. — I am so tired.” 


OUR SAINTS. 


199 

And she bowed her head, while her slight 
frame quivered and trembled with the blind 
passion of rebellion and pain. 

I let her grief have its sway, — I let her tears 
fall. — I have great faith in tears, — Jesus wept. 

When I spoke at last, I went back to her 
first words, of the uselessness of it all, and I 
only said : 

“ In all God sends to you there is a meaning, 
Maud ; no duty, however humble and insig- 
nificant, but He can make it a means of grace ; 
the little things, if done in the service of Christ, 
may become great things,” and softly I re- 
peated words Herbert loved : 

“ Consecrate each petty care, 

Make angels’ ladders, out of clouds. 


We whose law is love, serve less 
By what we do, than what we are ” 

And then I left Maud ; there are so many 
times in life, 1 think, when we need to be 
alone, — there are so many battles that must 
be fought by ourselves ! 


200 


OUR SAINTS. 


I left her to meet the truth, that though 
her heart be sore and lonely, still the duties 
of every-day life must be taken up. 

When next we met, I knew my daughter 
had grasped the truth ; knew it from the light 
in her eyes, the first beaming of the coming 
back of the freshness of heart that is now so 
abiding with Maud, for in that hour she had 
stretched out her empty hands in a wild yearn- 
ing to have them filled again ; she had pros- 
trated her empty heart with an eager cry for 
comfort, comfort, — and even as thus she cried, 
something better than she asked had come, 
for Maud was a child of prayers and prayer, 
and in with her tears and pleadings she had 
murmured, “ Thy will be done.” 

“ Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall 
be comforted.” — The promise began to come 
true to my Maud from that hour. 

Only just at first she could not realize it 
any more than the soldier fighting in the heat 
and amid the roar of battle, can realize the 
after peace of victory. For she had accepted 


i 


OUR SAINTS. 201 

the sorrow God sent, which she never really 
had done till then, — and when accepted, Di- 
vine aid came to help her to bear it patiently, 
cheerfully, willingly taking up the lowly duties 
of life, as services to be rendered for Christ’s 
sake. 

Hence deeds by which submission was 
cemented, seals of trust, set to that struggle- 
hour that had tried my Maud. 

In the alcove nook, which the sons and 
daughters call my special retreat, there hangs 
a little picture that has become to me a type 
of this struggle in Maud’s soul, and I find my- 
self desiring to put its story down in words. 

It is nothing more than a fisher-girl leaning 
against a craggy cliff, with her hand resting 
on a heavy burden by her side. 

All about are the signs of desolation ; the 
wide sea-beach strewn with signs of wreck, 
telling of peril on the deep ; but the form of 
the girl, the utter weariness of her attitude 
speaks of a deeper desolation, — a heart deso- 
lation. 


202 


OUR SAINTS. 


You know the story at a glance. — The sailor 
she loved will never come back ; you know 
young though she is, she has come to that 
age of the heart, “when Hope is only a re- 
membered thing, like a fair bird flown away 
down the golden mists of the valley of 
youth,” and thus her gaze is backward. 

This is the visible picture ; — a tender, sad 
picture, but nothing more, save for the on- 
reaching suggestion it holds, and which any 
thoughtful observer straightway divines, for 
somehow one feels only for a brief time, the 
fisher-girl rests, — soon she will be on her way 
again ; she will lift her burden, — and take up 
life and daily duties. 

And, as in thought we pass on to this 
sequel, we seem to see beyond the wreck- 
strewn shore, beyond the heart-ache looking 
from her eyes, on to a time, when because the 
duties of life were bravely resumed, somehow 
the bitterness of the sorrow lessened. 

This is the little picture I link with thoughts 
of my Maud, perchance because my eyes 
rested on it as I lifted my gaze from watching 


OUR SAINTS. 


203 

her bowed figure sitting under the shadow of 
the old oak tree, Maud’s favorite seat ever 
since that hour, for it was there, 

“In awe she listened.” — 

Ah, what wondrous words my child heard ; 
Christ’s words, — “ Peace be still,” — “ Let not 
your heart be troubled,” — “ Blessed are they 
that mourn,” — “ Follow thou Me.” 

Hearkening to these breathings of the 
Spirit, no wonder the shade 

“Passed from her soul away,” — as, 

“ In low trembling voice she cried, 

Lord, help me to obey.” 

No wonder in that hour, 

“ The Blessing fell upon her soul, 

.... the hour of peace, came.” — 

“ God’s right-hand angel, bright and strong, 
Christ’s strengthener in the agony, 

Teach us the meaning of that psalm, 

Of fullness only known by thee : 

‘ Thy will be done ! ’ we sit alone 

And grief within our hearts grows strong 
With passionate moaning till thou come, 

And turn it to a song. 


204 


OUR SAINTS. 


“ Come when the days go heavily, 

Weighed down with burdens hard to bear ; 
When joy and hope fail utterly, 

And leave us fronted with despair ; 

Come not with flattering earthly light, 

But with those clear, grand eyes that see 
Straight toward eternity. 

“ Teach us to watch when work seems vain, 
This is half victory over fate, 

To match ourselves against our pain ; 

The rest is done when we can wait. 

Unveil our eyes to see how rife 
With bloom the thorny path may be 
Which only Thou canst see.” 


IV. 


mother’s extracts continued. 

npHE story of my Eulalie, it has been 
sweet, pure, glad as a song, all the live- 
long days of her life. 

Well-chosen was my text for her : “ Blessed 
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” 
for verily she has ever seemed to walk in the 
light of His love. 

Till now, when she is at the meridian of her 
years, on her dear face there rests “ the per- 
fect loveliness of a woman’s countenance ; 
the peace which is founded in the memory of 
happy and useful years, full of sweet records, 
— joined with the abiding child-likeness which 
is still full of change and promise, opening al- 
ways, and bright with hope of better things 
to be won and to be bestowed.” 

And yet, she too has been tried ; the sin- 

(205) 


206 


OUR SAINTS. 


cerity of her life’s chief purpose — consecra- 
tion to Christ — has been tested, — but it has 
been by joy, not by sorrow. 

She expressed something of wherein she 
found the discipline of life, in a letter which I 
copy, for it holds the essence, I think, of what 
I may call the soul’s hour of decision in Eu- 
lalie’s experience. 

The decision of submitting, — because it is 
God’s will, — to accepting without a murmur, 
the truth that is wont to creep shadow-like, 
close to every earthly joy, — the lack of per- 
manency, where permanency seems such a 
precious thing. 

• “ I am so happy,” — thus Eulalie wrote at a 

date that counted half on to a double decade 
after her marriage day, — “ so happy, dear 
mother, you know our life, Arthur’s and mine, 
the ideal, I think, of wedded joy ; a life that is 
truly as much, rather more, in its daily un- 
folding a love-song, than it was when first we 
began to tread its pathway hand in hand. 

“ And yet, 


OUR SAINTS. 


207 

“ Only one brief time have tears fallen in 
our home in all this lapse of years, for a sor- 
row that touched our hearts, through our own 
hearts, and not through sympathy for the 
troubles of others. 

“You know what that loss was, — how ‘ the 
hope that was like music/ passed away in si- 
lence, you know, too, mother, how 

‘“The loss that brought us pain, 

.... But made us love the more/ 

And yet, 

“ And now, hopes that are not silent, what 
a joyous carol of young voices they ring out 
in our home. 

“ Think, mother, of your Eulalie, with two 
strong lads of her own, and the baby girl, with 
eyes blue as my husband’s, — yes, I am happy, 
so happy ! 

“And yet, 

“ And then Arthur’s life, how rich it is in 
the power of helping others, and never a deed 
of kindness, a free-handed liberality does my 
husband plan, in which I do not share, — and 


208 


OUR SAINTS. 


all the honor he has won, this husband of 
mine, it is like a crown of glory to me his wife. 

“And yet, 

“ Do you ask me why this repeated yet 
runs through my letter like a dark thread 
through a fabric of golden warp and woof? — 
Because, mother, I am afraid of my own hap- 
piness. You know what the Bible says, ‘ The 
Lord loveth whom He chasteneth.’ — Does 
not God love us, and is this why the years 
come and go laden every succeeding one, 
with deeper content and gladness ? — Is it that 
God does not love us, that He lets us thus es- 
cape chastening? — I am afraid, I tremble, as 
I take my joyful life and clasp it close to my 
heart, — yes, I am afraid. You know, too, how 
the poet sings : 

“ ‘ Unbroken sunshine and perpetual heat, 

Make deserts only, — clouds that bring no rain 
Shelter no gardens.’ 

“ Can it be our heart garden-plots will parch 
into barren deserts, because of too much sun- 
shine ? Will there be no flowers because no 
tears water them ? 


OUR SAINTS. 


209 

“ Or, — can it be that joy, the very dearness 
of it, holds the secret of discipline, just as 
truly as sorrow does ? — The chastening of 
gladness, — can there be such a thing? — 

“ I have been trying to follow this query, 
but I lose my way so easily, — and yet, I think, 
last night as I sat alone for awhile, I did meet 
and grasp it. I think I hold the thread now that 
unravels the intricate coil of joy’s discipline, — 
and do you know, mother, it was hard for me 
to bow and humbly accept the knowledge 
that its discipline is in its very uncertainty 
of permanence ; this not knowing what the 
morrow holds, that bounds the way of the 
gladdest, as well as the saddest heart. — Oh, I 
think it is hard to accept cheerfully. 

“And then, the temptation to be satisfied 
with the present life of happiness ; why, it is 
so strong, verily I could say : 

“ ‘Would God renew me from my birth, 

I’d almost live my life again.’ 

“ And yet this satisfaction and joy in tem- 
poral things, — for I know God means them to 

14 


210 


OUR SAINTS. 


be joy-giving, — is just what I must hold with a 
heart-willingness to relinquish without a mur- 
mur, if He wills it best. 

“ Rebellion at the possibility of loss and 
change, — rebellion at the uncertainty of all 
perishable things, herein is, I think, the temp- 
tation of prosperity, submitting to this lack of 
permanency, the chastening of joy. 

“ This was the truth I met yesterday as I 
sat alone, remembering my joys, and I tried 
to submit to it, tried to take them all in my 
heart, — my joys that are so dear, — as Hannah 
took the child Samuel in her arms to offer him 
to the Lord. 

“ Yes, I tried to offer them as gifts of sub- 
mission, back to the great Giver’s hand, pray- 
ed that I might walk softly in my gladness, 
and even as I thus prayed, darkness like a 
cloud before the sun, fell over my heart, the 
test of the question was so hard. 

“ Could I, for Christ’s sake, relinquish with- 
out a murmur, my dearest? — Even the first 
whisper of the query made me tremble. 

“ But, 1 did meet it.” 


OUR SA/JVTS. 


21 1 


“ I did meet it,” — as I read that brief line 
traced in my Eulalie’s hand, out from the 
words I seemed to catch the sound of a true, 
saint-like echo of faith, beating in my Eulalie’s 
soul. 

And that echo of submission to God’s will, 
in continuing or withholding her treasures, 
and of acknowledging that all her joys were 
God -given, was of more worth to me, her 
mother, than all the deeds of loving charity, 
and sweet ministry that for years had borne 
witness to my Eulalie’s heart’s right to the 
claim of Lady, which legally her husband’s 
title had conferred on her. 

“ Lady,” — Do you remember Ruskin’s defi- 
nition of the word ? 

“ Lady means ‘ bread-giver,’ and a Lady has 
claim to her title only so far as she communi- 
cates that help to the poor representatives of 
her Master, which women once ministering to 
Him of their substance, were permitted to ex- 
tend to that Master Himself, and where she 
is known as He Himself once was, in the 
breaking of bread.” 


212 


OUR SAINTS . 


How the loaves multiplied under the Mas- 
ter’s touch. — And may they not multiply un- 
der ours, if given in faith ? 

Think, — the material bread, how it becomes 
if offered in the spirit of Christ-taught love, 
not only food of physical refreshment, but the 
bread of sympathy, too, of comfort, of strength, 
of blessing, and of life. 

Truly this Gospel bread, the faith-touched 
loaves, is like the manna of old, enough for 
all who seek it, — only the giver and the receiver 
must, like the manna gatherers of Israel, obey 
the conditions that secure its supply. 

It must be daily bread, daily sought ; “ Give 
us this day our daily bread .” 

To-day’s grace, not to-morrow’s, for “the 
morrow will take thought for the things of it- 
self.” 

Turning from my Eulalie’s peaceful, joy- 
encompassed life to Zita’s, full as it is of per- 
plexity, hard work, and hourly contact with 
suffering and death, is like coming to one of 
those places in life where two cross-roads meet. 


OUR SAINTS. 


213 

The one pathway like so many of our En- 
glish roads and lanes, bounded by green 
hedges and starred with flowers, primroses 
and daisies, golden buttercups and cowslips, 
the other a rugged path, up-hill all the. way. 

“Does the road wind up-hill all the way? 

Yes, to the very end. 

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day ? 

From morn till night, my friend.” 

This is the path my Zita treads. 

Her work has greatly increased within the 
last six months; she is at home again, but 
the memory of those war-days is as fresh in 
her mind as the note of bugle or drum-beat 
heard but yesterday. 

While as for myself, though two full years 
divides me from the time, I can not lose out 
of my heart the thanksgiving and the joy of 
that May morning when Eulalie and Arthur, 
Maud and I stood on Portsmouth pier and 
watched the approaching vessel ; a mere speck 
at first, but that grew as the distance lessened, 
till at last even my old eyes could distinguish 


OUR SAINTS. 


214 

Zita’s slender form clinging to Yvo’s strong 
arm. 

And then, the brave ship that had rode the 
waves, bowed before the winds, anchored at 
last in the desired haven, within sight of the 
white cliffs of England, — and an hour later 
my son and daughter stood again on English 
ground. 

Come back to me ! — the same, and yet so 
changed, — they had gone in the morning-time 
oi their life and experience, and now it was 
mid-day to those two, whatever age the years 
counted, for life had been a solemn, ear- 
nest thing to them. — Zita had not witnessed 
suffering without suffering ; Yvo, — but I will 
not speak of him now ; — and she had stood by 
many a dying man ; she had watched many a 
hard, long struggle, as the mortal put on im- 
mortality. And these struggles had not always 
been the soul’s going from night to day, — 
there was the great sorrow of it, — but when it 
was, my Zita told me, it seemed to her many 
a time the spirit, just before it said good-bye 
to the earthly tabernacle, turned as it were, 


OUR SAINTS. 


215 

and left a look of peace on the brow, of holy 
calm on the face, that was like the last beam 
of sunset falling on a mountain side’s darkness ; 
and always she told me, too, when that look 
came and left its impress on the dying, it 
seemed to her a message from the Home to 
to which the spirit had gone. 

Some of Zita’s experiences those days when 
she held the position of hospital nurse in the 
crowded wards of the old barrack hospital at 
Delhi, are as tender as songs in the night ; as 
touching as the pathos of reality can make 
them. 

Many were the little souvenirs she brought 
home to one and another brave soldier’s dear 
one, mother, wife, child, or troth-plighted 
maiden, — some coming as tokens from the de- 
parted, — gifts from the dead to the living, as 
we use the words in our earthly language, and 
some gifts from the living to the living. 

I can see now the library table, strewed 
with those simple mementoes, as Zita, with 
touch gentle as though they had been of price- 
less worth, assorted and re-labelled one small 


2l6 


OUR SAINTS. 


package after another, that by the next day's 
post was to wing its way to many a fireside 
from one end of England to the other. 

There was nothing of any great value 
among them, but of all the gifts costly and 
rich, beautiful and rare, that ever my eyes had 
beheld, none ever seemed to me so full of 
heart-meaning, as those simple rings and seals, 
cut and polished by the senders' own hands; 
the stones, blades of grass, and in one case 
grains of sand, from the graves of those who 
will never come back to their homes in this 
sea-girt, happy English Isle. 

Watching Zita busy with this task of love, 
I fell into wondering, wherein this daughter 
of mine, who had been so blessed in the gifts 
of “talents," to which she had “gained beside 
them five talents more " had found the disci- 
pline of life. — Had it come to her as a tempta- 
tion, or as some trial of faith ? 

Later on she told me, and later on I will 
tell you, but I pause a minute first over those 
words, “ gained beside them five talents 


more. 


OUR SAINTS. 


217 

What are the Gospel-recorded talents which 
the Lord entrusts to us every one ? 

Are they “ opportunities for serving God ” — 
and is that why one grows into two ? — I think 
it must be ; I think the law of Nature in deal- 
ing with her plants and flowers holds good in 
the Scriptural sense of interpreting the Bible- 
mentioned talents, and you know in Nature’s 
realm, one flower is but the outgrowth of the 
seed of another. 


V. 

mother’s journal continued. 

M Y Zita and Yvo’s experiences were so 
closely inwrought at the special time 
to which I now refer, and the crisis period 
which came to them during it, was so decided 
by the past tenor of their lives, that I can not 
well picture the one without the other. 

Zita had always been to Yvo something of 
a sister-mother, always his help and guide; 
nothing was ever too much for her to give or 
do for him. 

Then, too, their tastes and aspirations, the 
enthusiasm of their natures, were specially 
harmonious, and while the difference in their 
ages gave Zita a certain formative influence 
over Yvo, the freshness of his individuality 
was never merged into hers. 

She gloried in his chosen profession ; she 
(218) 


OUR SAINTS. 


2T9 

thought it the noblest in the world ; and Yvo’s 
consecration of his young energies, the strength 
of his youth to the study, and afterwards the 
practice of relieving suffering, healing the sick 
and pain-stricken, was to Zita a more beauti- 
ful and grander thing than if he had stood be- 
fore the world a crowned king in the realms 
of art, science, poetry, or philosophy. 

Yes, though Hugh our soldier, was a dar- 
ling brother to her, and she exulted in his val- 
iant deeds and dauntless courage, Yvo was 
her hero, his life of active service, bounded 
though it was by hospital walls and hospital 
wards, was the heroic life. 

And when he received the appointment of 
assistant surgeon in the regiment in which 
Hugh was at that time captain, Zita sailed 
away with him over the wide sea, to far-off 
India, with a song in her heart, though she 
' knew that ocean voyage was the gateway 
leading to much of danger, privation, and 
service, that would try not only nerve and 
courage, but hand and heart. 

But I have no time to detail the experiences 


220 


OUR SAINTS. 


of their life in India, Yvo’s as surgeon, and 
Zita's as nurse, for though it was marked by- 
much that touched them both closely, it is a 
still closer experience which I would now 
portray. 

To Zita not many months before she sailed 
away from us, there had come that something, 
which suddenly had made her heart flutter, as 
though it had been a girl’s heart, made all 
the future shine with the radiance of a dream- 
like beauty. 

But she did not hearken to its pleading, 
steadfastly she put the dream aside. 

“ My duty,” she had said, “ is with Yvo ; my 
life I have pledged myself to devote to him, 
and the sick and suffering, and not to leave 
that service from any motive of weariness, de- 
sire for change, or dream of happiness, no — it 
can not be.” 

And whatever struggle this resolve may 
have cost her heart at that time, no sign of it 
left impress on her face, or wonted cheerful 
brightness of spirit. Just here I should say, 
Zita went forth on this mission of healing, 


OUR SAINTS. 


221 


bound by no rules, she belonged to no sister- 
hood ; it was voluntary service, but none 
the less active and full. 

For the months immediately following their 
arrival in India, were among the darkest of 
the dark months, during which 

“ The poor man’s stay and comfort, 

The rich man’s joy and pride, 

Fell fighting side by side.” 

And Zita went among those poor, wounded 
men, with a gentle tenderness, that made her 
to them, an angel of blessing. 

She seemed, so my sons have told me, to 
hold the key that unlocked their hearts, and 
she never found entrance to these citadels, that 
can not be taken by force, without leaving in 
th'em some leaf of comfort from the Tree of 
Life, every leaf of which is for healing. 

She believed, — and she acted on the belief, 
“ in every human being, unless he be com- 
pletely hardened,” and I have often heard 
Zita say, she never met one who was com- 
pletely, “there is still one bright spot, one 


222 


OUR SAINTS. 


point of susceptibility for that which is good, 
and this is the point by which to take hold of 
him and raise him, so that the light which is 
in him may gradually dispel the darkness.” 

But I must hasten on to Zita’s trial-test, for 
it was drawing near, the shadow of it was be- 
ginning to fall even on those days, when her 
service seemed so fruitful. 

Zita had made one great mistake, and it 
was this that she had to meet and conquer, 
before she could come out from the testing 
like gold, tried in the fire’s crucible. 

Her mistake was, that while she had been 
brave and noble in self-abnegation for Yvo’s 
sake, and self-sacrificing for the sake of the 
work, to which she had from girlhood desired 
to give the strength of her life, in both cases, 
it had been self that had achieved the victory, 
and not the self mastery, which in humbleness 
of spirit, acknowledges self nothing, but the 
grace of God all. 

“/will do it,” Zita had said, and as she thus 
said, her heart beat high with the conscious- 
ness of what a grand thing it was to cast aside 


OUR SAINTS. 


223 

earthly love and joy for the sake of minister- 
ing to the suffering, and helping and encour- 
ing Yvo ; and in that heart-beat of self-gratu- 
lation, even before the words, “/ will,” had 
found utterance in her voice, there had rooted in 
her heart the tiny plant, — spiritual pride, — that 
is wont to be at first appearing, of lowly growth 
in human hearts, — so lowly, that keen must 
be the watching that detects its first upshoot, 
but, that when once fairly rooted, sends out 
strong tendrils, that like the net-work of the 
wild vine, clings about flower and plant, till 
at last the flower and the plant are hidden by 
its greenery of foliage. 

“ In my own strength,” — yes, it was Zita’s 
mistake, — when she told me of the hour, when 
she was brought to the full knowledge of this, 
humbly as a little child, she confessed her 

former pride and self-sufficiency, and so 

thankful was she, — though the discovery of it 
had been hard, the struggle to up-root it harder 
still, — that God had sent the trial that showed 
her how empty her services were, how weak 
her strength of purpose, except as it was 
Christ’s strength made perfect in weakness. 


224 


OUR SAINTS. 


Thus from the learning of her own heart’s 
weakness, the saint-like echo of a higher life, 
began to sound in my Zita’s, — thus not from 
the doing of great deeds, the rendering of 
active services that haloed her outward life, 
was she crowned victor, but because Christ 
became all, self nothing. 

And when this had taken place, soft and 
sweet as the music of sea waves, creeping up 
on the low-lying shore of a pleasant land 
vvhen the night is calm, in my Zita’s heart, love, 
— not such as the poet sings of, but love in the 
nighest, fullest meaning, — 

‘Took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords 
with might, 

Smote on the chord of self, that trembling, passed in 
music out of sight.” 

After that hour, no matter what the service, 
great or small, it was done unto Him, — after 
that hour, 

“ Every leaf and every nook, 

Every wave in every brook. 

Chanting with a solemn voice, 

’Minded of her better choice.” 


OUR SAINTS. 


225 

It is a simple story repeated in these com- 
monplace words, — this of Zita’s, we see it 
duplicated time after time in lives that like 
hers are engaged in active service. 

Christian lives, for my Zita was a Christian 
all that time, even when she let self become 
so absorbed in work that she left untended 
the silent, sweet growth of spiritual depend- 
ence on the Master, — a growth that needs much 
prayer, hours of meditation, closet hours, with 
closed doors, for without them, speedily active 
service grows into a weed, rather than a flower. 

You remember how quaint old Herbert ex- 
presses this truth, 

“ But while I grow in a straight line, 

Still upwards bent, as if Heaven were mine own % 

\ Thy anger comes, — and I decline.” 

But I began to tell how my Zita discovered 
self in her heart. 

It came about in such a natural way, as 
most of the deeper experiences of our lives do. 
Telling me of it, she said : 

“ It never once occurred to me but that I 
was chief in Yvo’s affections, and I must con- 

15 


226 


OUR SAINTS. 


fess, in my pride, I thought too, my encourag- 
ing, counselling, and sympathy in his work, 
was as needful to him as sunlight to flowers. 

44 1 saw Mildred Gray, the chaplain’s daugh- 
ter, time after time. I knew she and Yvo were 
friends, but never once did I think she was 
more to him than a pleasant acquaintance, as 
were nearly all of the officers’ wives and daugh- 
ters who had lingered at that post of danger. 

44 But when suddenly I did know it, my heart 
rebelled ; I said I could not, I would not have 
it ; said it not to Yvo, but to myself. 

44 It was the day following one of the fiercest 
engagements of that time, so marked by bat- 
tle and loss. 

“ All day we had been going from one and 
another poor wounded soldier lad ; my heart 
was heavy with the weight of woe I could not 
relieve ; my spirit darkened by the great prob- 
lem of permitted suffering. 

44 1 walked with tears in my eyes, as I turned 
from one crowded ward to another, — and it was 
just jn that turning, that I met one of those 
crises in the soul’s history which come heralded 


OUR SAINTS. 


227 

by neither matin or vesper bell, but that strike 
the note of an hour that gives us the ‘ means 
of deeper self-knowledge, — and reads off the 
reckoning of our spirits, and tells us whether 
we more deeply live or more begin to die/ 

“ The space that I crossed was no more than 
the going from one room into another, but it 
was just there that I saw Yvo, — my heart was 
full of him, — you know how it is when one is 
thinking other thoughts, we do yet so carry 
the abiding consciousness of our dearest, — and 
I realized all of trying service that day had 
held for my surgeon brother ; who was as piti- 
ful of wounds and suffering, as a mother over 
the hurt of her child ; who never, though he 
had become so familiar with it, had become 
wonted in the sense of insensibility to the 
sight of the physical misery war wrought. 

“ On seeing him, I quickened my steps ; he 
was halting to speak to a nurse, a volunteer ; 
I straightway noticed, for my eyes had be- 
come accustomed to the regulation dress, and 
as is the way in intense moments, I was quick 
to note the least thing. 


228 OUR SAINTS . 

“ I did not think of Mildred, there was noth- 
ing to suggest her in the figure kneeling by the 
low stretcher, on which a dying corporal was 
breathing away the fast-waning earthly life. 
As I stood by Yvo’s side, she was holding in 
her hand some soothing draught ; her face was 
turned from me; then, too, it was of Yvo I 
was thinking ; up to him I looked through the 
misty veil of my tears, but Yvo’s eyes, they 
did not answer mine ; his gaze was fixed on 
that kneeling figure, — and by that gaze I knew 
there was one nearer and dearer to my broth- 
er’s heart than I, who had thought myself 
all. 

“ A glance told me it was Mildred Gray. I 
did not linger to speak, I went on ; there were 
sufferers, and sufferers needing help. 

“ The night had waned, gray dawn was be- 
ginning to give place to a faint glimmer of day- 
light, when I sought rest for a brief hour or 
two. 

“ Misery had appalled me that night ; the in- 
finite pathos of suffering had come close to 
me, — and yet, — as I lay down and closed my 


OUR SAINTS. 


229 

eyes, the sweet past of my childhood and 
youth in the old home, in our happy England, 
came clothed in tender colors, and led me 
backward. 

“Those thoughts at first were strangely 
peaceful, to have been prefaced by such scenes 
of woe, verily like that picture of the lamb 
feeding on the grass that up-sprang around the 
cannon’s mouth. 

“ But that peace was not a tarrying guest ; 
memory’s tide when it set heart-ward, drifted 
up along with the sea-flowers and the shells, 
sea-weeds and bits of wreck, and swiftly as a 
bird wings its way from north to south, I was 
back again in the shady lane that leads by the 
brook-side, beyond the park, where the cranes- 
bill, speedwell, and forget-me-nots grow. I 
saw the flowers blooming there when last I 
trod the path, as plainly as if my eyes all day 
and night had not been looking on scenes of 
woe and bloodshed. 

“ I seemed to hear again the notes of the 
nightingale, and the very tones of the voice 
that interpreted its song: 


230 


OUR SAINTS. 


“ ‘ Set in a cadence bright 

Singing our loftiest dream, that we thought none did 
know.' 

“Ah ! Yvo, he heard (as I thought) the night- 
ingales sing in his heart that night, too ; but 
it was a song of the present Yvo heard, — not 
of the past, like mine. 

“ With the memory of that voice, came the 
vision I had thought forever gone, of a home 
which might have been, a love, — which I had 
cast out of my heart, because I would be all 
to Yvo. 

“Yes, I saw then, everything was so real, in 
that hour when I had just come from minis- 
tering to many a one who had passed in the 
silence and darkness of the night within the 
valley of shadows; I saw then it was for Yvo 
I had given up the joy that seemed so sweet, 
so dear, that twilight, when I walked down 
the English lane, where the flowers grew ; for 
Yvo, not from consecration to Christ, but be- 
cause I said in my heart, Yvo needs me, I will 
be all to him ; exalting self, while in my blind- 
ness I thought I was abnegating it, — and then 


OUR SAINTS. 


231 

everything was so real, I repeat, out of my 
recognized rebellion at another’s coming to be 
more in Yvo’s heart than I was, even though 
I had said in my self-sureness his happiness 
was more to me than my own, — came as 
though a veil had been rent and torn by some 
strong hand from before a half-concealed pict- 
ure, a clear sight of my heart and all its self- 
assertion ; — and it did not spare me that 
sight ; it revealed the growth of a self that 
held its own high service to sufferers close, as 
one holds some treasure of their own finding. 

1 saw, — what it meant to become a little 

child, and, — that is all, mother ; — you see 

it is nothing in the telling.” — 

Thus my Zita ended her recital, adding : 
“ But — it was much to me in the living.” 

A brief hour ; but in it began self-mastery 
in my Zita’s heart. 

Only began, no work in the soul of man, or 
by the hand of man, that is worth the doing 
is accomplished without labor ; no heart is 
emptied of self without a struggle. 


232 


OUR SAINTS. 


The King’s daughter, glorious within, is only 
“ perfect through my comeliness which I put 
upon thee, saith the Lord God.” 

The garment of humility; the robe of 
Christ’s righteousness, not her own, from that 
hour, this robe of the saints enwrapt my Zita. 

And who are the saints? 

Old Luther says : 

“ Those who in their necessity comfort 
themselves no otherwise than because they 
have Christ the Son of God as their Saviour ; 
those who keep close to His word.” 

And His word? — Lo, it is, “ Humble your- 
self, and I will lift you up. — Do all for the 
glory of God.” 

Well named was my Zita, — well chosen her 
beatitude promise : “ Blessed are the meek.” 


VI. 


CONTINUED EXTRACTS. 

A S the trial of seeing her own heart and 
^ ** its weakness came to Zita through the 
discovery that Yvo loved, there came to Yvo 
from that love a trial-test too. 

Mildred Gray was a gentle, quiet girl, some- 
what thoughtful and grave for one so young, 
— she was but twenty at that time ; she never 
trifled with Yvo with the gay caprice of a 
girl’s changing mood, but no sooner did she 
catch in his look and voice, the something of 
deeper tenderness than his gaze or his tone 
were wont to hold for any other, than by her 
sweet, calm will, and gentle purpose to save 
him pain, she straightway held herself so re- 
mote from him that he found no opportunity 
to pass the quiet barrier of reserve, and put 
into uttered words, the earnest feeling, the 
gaze held, and the tone hinted. 

(233) 


OUR SAINTS. 


234 

And though Yvo was quick to see this, 
though he felt she did not love him, he could 
wait, he said to himself ; he was young, — and 
the thought that already there might be an- 
other than himself of whom Mildred dreamed 
when the far-away look came into her blue 
eyes, the faint smile played about her rosy 
lips, never once occurred to him, — she was 
so dear to him, somehow he took it for 
granted, he must in time become dear to her. 

Not till that hour, when Zita had seen and 
rebelled against the light in his eyes, as he 
looked down on Mildred’s kneeling figure, 
did Yvo make discovery that there was an- 
other. 

Zita had gone ; he too, though he still re- 
mained in the same ward, had passed on to 
render services requiring the skillful touch of 
a trained hand, to one and another of the 
wounded, bullet-pierced, and sword-cut sol- 
dier-lads, that so bravely tried to suppress 
their groans of pain. 

The light was somewhat dim in that hastily 
constructed barrack hospital ; but the beams 


OUR SAINTS. 


235 

from a swinging lamp fell full on Mildred’s 
figure. 

It was still, too, in that place of suffering, — 
those suppressed groans, a whispered word, 
an occasional moan ; these and the labored, 
heavy breathing of dying men were the only 
sounds. 

A step coming up the space, — that separat- 
ed like a path the long line of stretchers on 
which the sufferers lay, — broke the hush, as 
the sudden striking of a clock breaks the still- 
ness of a midnight hour. 

Yvo turned to note the incomer; a tall 
figure, soldierly and brave in his bearing, 
though in army rank but a lieutenant, Yvo 
saw from the epaulet insignia that shone as 
he paused beneath the rays of that lamp- 
light that fell so full on Mildred. 

At the sound of that footfall, Mildred too 
turned, — and then, — her face so pale and 
wan with watching, suddenly grew rosy, her 
eyes full of the tender light of love. — 

But she spoke no word, — she only lifted her 
little hand, that looked so small, so white, 


OUR SAINTS. 


236 

such a tender thing, as for a moment it was 
held in the firm clasp of the youth, — who said 
no word either. 

And then his step sounded again, not to 
pause, till he came to the wounded comrade 
he was seeking. 

And, just as Mildred’s gaze, that had been 
uplifted for a second to the new-comer, was 
returning again to the watching of the dying 
corporal, — who was growing restless now, — her 
eyes met Yvo’s. He had drawn near, and was 

standing by her side again, — and, Yvo, he 

was a brave, true-hearted man, noble as a 
knight of old, loyal and pure in his love for 
this maiden, Mildred Gray — he accepted the 
story in Mildred’s eyes, and reverently, as 
though bowing above some dear one’s grave, 
he bowed his head — and, — he too passed on. 

Thus that night, when Zita struggled with 
the selfishness of her heart, that wanted to be 
first in Yvo’s love ; when she was thinking how 
her brother was listening to the nightingales 
of hope, singing songs in his heart, even amid 
the dark scenes of suffering that surrounded 


OUR SAINTS. 


23 7 

him, Yvo was hearing no nightingale’s song of 
hope and love. 

He only knew he went on, and did his duty, 
— he only knew, death was a fierce reaper that 
night. 

He felt no weariness, he took no heed of 
passing hours, — no, — he went on, like one 
who walks some high-road and yet seeks no 
goal. 

And now I must crowd the story of months 
and years into a brief space. 

Quick as one day followed another, battle 

followed battle at that time, and, — it was 

only the next sundown, when into that barrack 
hospital there was much coming and going. 

But Yvo seemed to see but one man among 
the hundreds wounded, and all the strength 
of his will, all the skill of his profession, was 
concentrated in saving the faint, fast ebbing 
life of that one. 

Was he high in rank? No. — Was he one 

dear from long friendship or tie of kinship? 
No, — he was a stranger to Yvo ; only once, and 
that for a brief minute in the flickering light 


OUR SAINTS. 


238 

of a dimly burning lamp, had he seen the face 
of the young soldier, who lifted his eyes to 
his with such a look of mute appeal in them. 

Yvo needed no word to interpret that look, 
Yvo, my son, whose benediction verse, chosen 
in his babyhood, has been so true a type of 
himself. — “ Blessed are the merciful.” — 

At the first summons Mildred came ; her 
father was with her, Chaplain Gray, who had 
grown old in his work of love, and whose 
place my Herbert was even then sailing over 
the wide sea to fill. 

Five minutes later it was all over, — silence, 
— never to be broken on earth, had set its seal 
to Mildred’s young love. 

It was Zita who told me all this, — and who 
told me, too, how during the months that fol- 
lowed, before Mildred and her father left the 
grave of the young stranger in that battle- 
field burial-place, and sailed home to En- 
gland, Yvo was tender of her as a brother. 

Zita, who told me of his nobleness of heart 
when put to the test ; of his striving with all the 
might. of his surgical knowledge and skill, to 


OUR SAINTS. 


239 

save the life of that stricken soldier youth ; of 
how he cast self out of sight, as he tried ap- 
pliance and remedy, not only from loyal ad- 
herence to the motto of every true surgeon 
and physician, “To save life, to relieve suffer- 
ing,” but for the sake of Mildred, who loved 
the youth, — and of how when all failed, self 
was still forgotten in caring for Mildred. 

All this Zita told me, but it was Yvo him- 
self, who told me the something more. 

It was a spring day, close following his and 
Zita’s return from India, I walked with my 
son alone. We crossed the rustic bridge that 
spans the river, just beyond the gate of the park. 
The hazel rods were tasseled with catkins, 
primroses, and wild anemones were blooming 
in flowery clumps amid the green grass-blades ; 
and it was then that Yvo told me the strength 
to rise above his sorrow, was not because he 
was strong in his manhood, but because he 
accepted it as a God-sent trial of the faith in 
his soul, which needed to be tried by the loss, 
or rather the withholding of the thing most 
dear, before its submission to a will Higher 
than his own, could be tested. 


240 


OUR SA/JVTS . 


Two years elapsed between that spring 
twilight when Yvo talked with me of what 
submission meant; of how, even while it 
permits a longing to fill the heart for the 
thing which 

“Looks so sweet — looks so dear,” 

it holds the power of enabling the soul to 
draw a lesson from loss, revealing the good 
that is in it, and to be found by the faith- 
seeker. 

Two years, I say, since that twilight, and 
through them my Yvo had never once flagged 
at his post of duty, in one of the largest of 
London hospitals. — A position that was 
awarded him immediately on his retiring 
from the army, on returning from India. 

Two years, and then again he and Mildred 
Gray met. 1 will not picture that meet- 

ing, nor those that followed, I only tell this 
sequel of my Yvo’s story, because it is so 
sweet to me. 

Enough, when they met, Mildred was an 
orphan ; old Chaplain Gray, work-worn and 


OUR SAINTS. 


241 

weary, had laid his head down like a tired 
child when the home-land was reached, and 
the Heavenly Father had given the old man 
the sleep, that is the prelude of awakening, 
that “ He giveth to His beloved.” 

Zita was with Yvo, and it was Zita who 

met Mildred, Zita, who found her so 

greatly changed within those two years, — 
Zita, who told Yvo of the change, and this 
was why he sought her. 

What could he do ? — and then those two, 
my Zita and Yvo, ministered to the girl, who 
seemed fading away, even while the spring 
was opening in its glad promise of bud and 
blossom. 

It was midsummer, — and Mildred’s face had 
grown whiter, her little hand thinner since 
the spring, — when Yvo stood by the low cush- 
ioned-chair on which she sat, leaning her tired 
head against the soft covering ; stood there, 
strong in the vigor of his manhood, and told 
at last the story that Zita had seen in his eyes 
that hour in the hospital barrack. 

And Mildred, she did not say nay to it ; — 
16 


242 OUR SAINTS. 

he knew her heart, the silent chapter in it, — 
he knew of that grave on India’s plain. 

So it was settled ; he was to take her to his 
heart, his home. Mildred Gray was to be his 
wife. 

And now I pass over a wide space of time ; 
years fled, and during them Mildred, guarded 
and watched like a flower by Yvo and Zita, 
slowly came back to health and strength. 

Years, during which Yvo never once asked 
if the old ache in her heart had found rest in 
the new joy, for he knew his love was a joy to 
Mildred, even though before ever she con- 
sented to wed she had told him she could 
never give what she had given, — “ because it 
is gone,” — these were Mildred’s words. 

Then there came a day when Yvo did not 
walk amid his patients in the crowded hos- 
pital wards, but when he kept watch in his 

own home from dawn to set of sun. Just as 

the day was waning, Zita held in her loving 
arms the little tender baby, God had sent to 
Yvo and Mildred. 

And now I must hasten, — one glimpse more 


OUR SAINTS. 


243 

into my Yvo’s heart, and then we will leave 
him. 

It was a Sabbath evening, quiet and peace- 
ful ; Mildred held the baby with his little cheek 
nestled close against her own, and as she held 
the child, her own head rested on her hus- 
band's shoulder ; and she looked up at him, 
and their eyes met as they had done twice be- 
fore in intense moments of their lives, — mo- 
ments when their souls had opened out before 
one another. 

It was Mildred who spoke ; going back as 
though there were no years between, to the 
time when Yvo had asked her to be his wife, 
softly she said : 

“ No, — I can not give you the love I gave 
another, — but — but — I give you more." 

Yvo’s text — “ Blessed are the merciful, for 
they shall obtain mercy," in golden letters my 
Zita illumined it for him, when because he felt 
it her due, he told her of this joy. 

When she gave it to him, he smiled and 
said: 


244 


OUR SAINTS. 


“ I thought the promise was all for There , 
not here.” 

And she replied, this daughter of mine, 
— Zita, whom the children in their youth 
were wont to call our prophetess, — in a tone 
low with reverent awe ; Zita never lightly 
uttered Gospel words : 

“ Surely the meaning is, that the Lord deals 
with us as we deal with others,” — and because 
she had learned the grace of not saying over- 
much when hearts are full, she did not add 
the other far-reaching thoughts, that to any 
thoughtful mind, nod out from that promise 
as blossoms on a flower-starred branch nod 
out, and give forth their fragrance when the 
summer wind in its gentle waving, sways them 
back and forth. 

A long story, do you say, this of my Yvo’s, 
— and where do I catch the saint-like echo in it? 

Where? — why, in that hour when he accept- 
ed disappointment not in rebellion, but in sub- 
mission, — when he went bravely on his way 
doing his duty and remembering, 


OUR SAINT S. 


245 


“We must be here to work; 

And men who work can only work for men. 
And not to work in vain, must comprehend 
Humanity, and so work humanly 
And raise men’s bodies still by raising souls. 
As God did first.” 

When, 

“ He showed 

How out of that submission, flowed the strength 
F or noblest acts of love, .... 

.... The mine and thine 
Of selfish right he scattered to the winds.” 

When, 

" His soul had learnt 
.... that God is great, 

God the compassionate, the merciful ; 

And yielding up his will to God’s, the three. 
Compassion, mercy, greatness, were as one.” 


VII. 


EXTRACTS STILL. 

ND now only a brief space is left for 



^ my Hugh, — but it is all that is needed ; 
for in former pages in this book of remem- 
brance, I revealed how I caught the first notes 
of saint-like echoes in his soul, that like one 
climbing some light-house stairway, was strug- 
gling up above temptation and wrong, till at 
last the clear light of firm adherence to duty 
could be hung in that light-house tower, — the 
deeds of a man, — its beams shining full and 
bright on the storm-tossed waves of life’s 
ocean. 

My Hugh, — yes, he struggled harder against 
tangible temptations than any of my children ; 
I mean by that word tangible, outward wrong- 
doing, — but remember, — 


“ ’Tis one thing to be tempted, 
Another thing to fall/’ 

(246) 


OUR SAINTS. 


247 

I recall so well the hour when long years 
ago in his babyhood, I wrote Hugh's name in 
my Bible, against the verse — “ Blessed are they 
who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” 

I questioned in my heart as to why I chose 
it. Persecuted ; it seemed such a hard word ; 
and persecution, it was a something that so 
belonged to by-gone times, at least it seemed 
so on the first reading. 

And yet, as I looked on Hugh even in his 
infancy, I knew the quick, impulsive, but ten- 
derly loving nature that smiled out from his 
dark eyes, were plain enough indications that 
his was a sensitive, keenly sympathetic heart, 
open to influences ; to whom the saying of no, 
when it involved a question of right that con- 
tained even so slight a thing as annoyance to 
another, would hold the essence of a pain 
akin to persecution ; and that in more impor- 
tant things, would be persecution to his own 
nature, and if done from a sense of right, 
verily become persecution for righteousness’ 
sake. 

And I detected, too, that victory would be 


OUR SAINTS. 


248 

no lightly won mastery in my Hugh’s heart ; 
I knew how when he thought he had con- 
quered, he would be brought again face to 
face with the temptation that had seemed 
robbed of its power to lure. 

I knew, just as he thought some love of 
wrong cast away, it would come again, — the 
fight need to be renewed. 

I knew, “ deeper even than these forms of 
temptation would be the conflict in his soul 
between tendencies to sin, as they rose into 
consciousness, and the influences that would 
deliver his soul from them.” 

I knew he would take “no step forward,” — 
Can any of us ? — “ without contending with 
evil.” 

And while the heart fails at this constant 
struggle between right and wrong, there is 
something grand in it too, something inspir- 
ing in the knowledge, that “ in our upward 
way, every step we take must be on a con- 
quered temptation ” ; something that keeps 
one humble in the knowledge, that we can 
only take these upward steps by seeking a 


OUR SAINTS. 


249 


strength Higher than our own ; something so 
beautiful in the knowing, too, if we take 
them, clinging like a trusting child to the 
heavenly Hand of guidance then, — even 
though we be persecuted by temptations with- 
out and temptations within ; — yet ours will be 
the joy of those to whom is promised, “the 
kingdom of Heaven.’' 

And I thank God that my Hugh early ac- 
cepted the truth, “that wherever there is 
spiritual combat there is temptation, for that 
is what temptation means.” 

Other trials, too, met Hugh as he trod the 
path of life. 

Trials of faith, submission, and patience. 
When he and Grace came home to us, — a year 
later than Zita and Yvo returned, — they left 
a child’s grave in India. 

A little grave often visited by Herbert and 
Mary, whose life-work is stilbin that far-offland. 

And the pale, languishing little blossom of 
a maiden they brought with them, was taken 
home to Heaven scarcely a twelvemonth after 
their arrival. 


250 


OUR SAINTS. 


So they were left childless, — so their faith 
was tried, — for it tries faith, to say when God 
takes little children, — “ Thy will be done.” 

We did not go to Portsmouth to meet 
Hugh and Grace, they came straightway to us 
at the Hall. 

They had told me Hugh was changed, — 
Grace had written of the shattered arm, the 
crippled limbs, my battle-scarred soldier son, 
that was coming back to me in place of the 
strong, beautiful Hugh who had left me. 

And yet, — when he came, — my mother- 
heart, my mother-eyes, refused for a moment 
to believe it was my Hugh. 

But his voice, one note of it ; his dear eyes, 
one glance of them, and his head was pillowed 
on my breast where it had nestled in his baby- 
hood. 

Yes, my loving child, my child of bene- 

diction, he had come back to me. 


VIII. 


STILL MORE EXTRACTS. 

T> RITTA, dear child, — “ our shining light 
^ must I trace a story that tells of strug- 
gle in her glad life ? 

Verily if there have been in her experience, 
times when clouds have encompassed her ; 
clouds of temptation, disappointment, and 
failure in being all she has aspired to be in 
singleness of purpose in serving the Lord, 
they have been like the clouds on which I 
gazed last night, looking from the tower win- 
dow at sunset. 

There had been a shower ; the wide open 
sky-view we catch from that elevated out- 
look was one mass of billowy grayish white 
clouds, with just a faint rosy glow toward the 
eastern horizon, when Maud called me to 
come and look at the beauty, that faint hint 
of color promised. 


(251) 


OUR SAINTS. 


252 

A promise that speedily was verified ; for as 
though some angel of light floated on rosy 
wing before the heaviest of the storm-clouds, 
a glow, delicate and clear in tone as the pink 
of the sea-shell, flushed the cloud bank till it 
glowed in a radiance bright as my Britta’s life, 
— and then, — wonder of wonders, as though 
the beauty of rose-tinting were not enough, 
the banded glory of the tri-colored arch shone 
on cloud and rosy brightness, while like the 
beat of some pulsing life, the gleam of a 
lightning-flash played for a moment across 
rainbow and rosy cloud. 

Verily, I repeat, it was a sky-picture, fitting 
to be a type of my Britta. 

For I know in her case, as in the lives of 
my other children, trials will come, there will 
be clouds, rain will fall, even if her bright 
spirit illumine the clouds with the rosy hues 
of trust, even if her faith bows the tears with 
hope. 


& Blessed are the peace-makers, for they 
shall be called the children of God.” 


OUR SAINTS. 


253 

This is Britta’s Bible promise, and while 
thus far in life, peace has come to her in rest 
from external trouble, external conflict and 
pain ; while she has been a peace-maker, in the 
constant giving of peace and joy to others, I 
know she has as yet trod but the first steps in 
her pilgrimage, and that while this peace gives 
a deep enjoyment to my Britta, I know 
there is. a deeper peace awaiting her, when 
her peace is “ repose after spiritual con- 
flict, — when her faith has stood the test of 
trial, and she has looked beyond the joy of 
the present time, and caught a glimpse of the 
peace of God, which ‘passeth understand- 
ing/ ” 

God grant the road may not be very rough 
that guides my Britta into this way of peace. 
God grant the rainbow may ever span the 
storm-clouds. 

Britta’s life is so glad now, I feel a mother’s 
longing to picture it, — her home is the dear- 
est little nest in all England, I think, and she 
reigns queen of it. 


OUR SAINTS. 


254 

Mr. Morris, her husband, is a man of inde- 
pendent means, yet a busy man. — 

But not too busy to find time to indulge 
Britta’s fondness for flitting like a bird, for 
many a month in the year, from one country 
to another. 

Thus when the harsh days of winter come, 
into our quiet home, — for the Hall is a quiet 
place now, — words from her bring gleams of 
Italy’s sunshine, or the brightness of sunny 
France, — and when summer reigns over the 
land, many are the white-winged missives she 
sends, like breaths of refreshment from cool 
Highland glens, Switzerland’s snow-capped 
Alps, or the nearer haunts that in her childhood 
she loved so well. — The northern coast of our 
own Devonshire, that is so bold in picturesque 
views, all about Lenton, Ilfracombe, and far- 
ther north. 

The saint-like echo in my Britta’s glad 
life ? as yet, only joy has sounded it forth. 

For her thus far, 

“ The Dove has settled on the cross/* 


OUR SAINTS. 


255 

But there is such a depth of earnestness, 
such a full recognition from Whom her bless- 
ings come, I do not fear for her future even if 
trials await her. 

It seems whispered to my heart, that she 
is one of those blessed of the Lord, of whose 
spirit it will always be true, that 

“ In fearless love and hope uncloyed, 

Forever on that ocean bright,” 

the ocean of God’s love, she will be 

“ Empowered to gaze, .... 

Deeper and deeper to plunge in light.” 

“Till — duly trained and taught. 

The concord sweet with love divine, 

Then, — with that inward music fraught, 
Forever rise and sing and shine.” 

This is how my Britta’s future looks to me, 
as I strive to interpret it by the present, as 
one interprets the future of a flower by its bud. 

For she is still in the spring-time of life, — - 
even though she has slipped on into the thir- 
ties ! in the time when sweet buds are but 

promises of the summer fruit. 


IX. 


A ND now the end, the last pages of 

my mother’s memories. 


As I began these reminiscences with 
thoughts of Francis, so I end them with a 
brief record of him, my first-born. 

The one of all my eight, in whose life now, 
the echo of the saintly spirit of resignation, 
patience, and struggle amid weakness, daily 
sounds with the fullest harmony of reality. 

I have said, before the darkening of this dear 
son’s eyes had begun to cast a shadow over his 
future, his spirit was in shadow ; he had launch- 
ed on the wide sea of speculative thought, and 
he had found no anchorage ; and yet never 
mariner sailed those waters of unrest and 

doubt, with a greater longing to find rest. 

(256) 


OUR SAINTS. 


25 7 

“ Blessed are they which do hunger and 
thirst after righteousness, for they shall be 
filled.” — —This is Francis’ benediction verse. 
I, his mother, chose it when first I saw the 
look of yearning for something more than 
earth can give, that looked out from his blue 
eyes, even while he was still a cradled baby. 

And yet, I, his mother, have wept many a 
tear of grief over the discipline that led my 
son to the spiritual thirst, which only Christ 
can fill, the spiritual hunger, which only Christ 
can satisfy. 

Blended in with the early conflict of 
thoughts that stirred Francis’ soul by the un- 
solvable mysteries of life and death, good and 
evil, — questions that tossed to and fro in his 
mind, as wind tosses tree boughs when the 
storm is high, — was the heart-conflict involved 
in his love for Grace Ward ; and the bitter 
jealousy of Hugh that crept in to destroy for 
a time the fair, sweet growth of brotherly 
affection, as ruthlessly as sea waves overleap 
barrier of jutting rock and sandy shore. 

And, as though the struggle of his mind to 
*7 


258 OUR SAINTS. 

become as a little child in faith, of his heart to 
rejoice over Hugh’s joy, were not enough to 
overmaster Francis’ self-will, there came that 
other trial that touched a bodily organ, when 
the light went out of the world for him, and 
all beautiful things in nature, and the dear 
faces of his best loved ones, the printed pages 
of books that were like friends, became as 
remembered pictures, — I can not detail the 
spiritual conflict my son waged, — I can not 
picture how he broke the chain of mental 
bondage, that sought to bound faith by sight ; 
neither can I detail the story of the inward 
self-mastery with which he broke loose the 
clasp that had forged many a link of jealousy 
about his brotherly love for Hugh; nor can I 
tell the hour when he humbly submitted to 
the darkening of his eyes. I can only deal in 
this record of Francis with results, not pro- 
cesses. 

And so I bridge the gulf of gloom, those 
years of struggle — and pass on to the time 
when my son accepted that tender truth, — that 
so takes the bitterness out of affliction, — that 


OUR SAINTS. 


259 

“ in all God’s providential dealings with us, He 
looks to eternal results.” 

A truth that always seems to me like some 
far-reaching meadow of rest that opens off 
from a dusty highway. 

I can only tell that though it was preluded 
by years of spiritual thirst, years of heart- 
hunger, the time came to my Francis when 
like another whose words I copy, he “ began 
at last to understand that why no fixity was 
to be found in philosophy was because it is 
unable to inspire with divine life,” — and “ for 
this reason he returned to the source of life in 
order again to draw from it peace and blessed- 
ness, — came also to the conviction that the 
wisdom revealed by God is destined to lay 
hold, not alone of feeling, but of the entire 
man,” and that after this his great aim be- 

came like the one whose words I continue to 
copy, to “ unfold the inner reasonableness and 
self-consistency of the Christianity which had 
brought peace to his heart, and vigor to his 
will.” 

Because of this, we all, mother, brothers, and 
sisters, came to “ look up to him as a man who 


26 o 


OUR SAINTS. 


had once fought out the battle between faith 
and knowledge in his own soul, and had found 
a reconciliation between them, the way to 
which he was anxious to point out to us/' and 
thus we felt “ confidence that it was in his 
power to lead us into a service born of Faith.” 

This is the mental self-victory that is my 
son’s, — as for the he&rt- mastery, I think the 
essence of it was held in that long-ago hour 
when my Hugh, taking Francis’ hand in his 
own strong clasp, said, drawing Grace toward 
him: “You will be a brother to her,” — and 

Francis answered, “Yes.” 

The blindness, the bodily trial ; what a test 
of patience and submission that has been to 
him, and yet never a murmur escapes him. 

Like Milton of old, verily the utterance of 
his life , though not spoken out in words, is 

“ When I consider how my light is spent 

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 

And that one talent which is death to hide, 

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 
To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
My true account, lest he, returning, chide ; 

‘Doth God exact day-labor, light denied ? ’ 

I fondly ask : but Patience, to prevent 


OUR SAINTS. 


261 


That murmur, soon replies, * God doth not need 
Either man’s work, or his own gifts ; who best 
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best ; his state 
Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed, 

And post o’er land and ocean without rest ; 

They also serve who only stand and wait.” 

This threefold mastery in Francis’ soul over 
mind, heart, and body ; this hunger and thirst 
that has been satisfied, because hunger and 
thirst after righteousness, — tell me? Does it 
not ring out a peal clear-noted as Christmas- 
tide bells of the saint-like echoes that are 
sounding in my Francis’ soul and life ? ring out 

“ Like an ^Eolian harp that wakes, 

Far thought, with music that it makes, 

A hidden hope, .... 

So heavenly toned, 

To feel although no tongue can prove. 

That every cloud that spreads above 
And veileth love, itself is love.” 


X. 

13 EADING over the by-gone pages, I feel 
there is no need for me to add to them. 

For, like the stern-light of a ship casting a 
radiance over the waves and billows crossed, 
they illumine the meaning of those three 
enigma sentences, that in our childhood and 
youth, we wondered over as we read them 
traced on the yellow sand on the sea-shore. 

“ Every gift we receive is a promise,” — its 
sequel, — “ But the gains are largely composed 
of what we lose.” 

“ Every beauty we behold but a prophecy ” 
— consider, — “Who knows what life, and 
beauty, and blessedness to others, may spring 
from seeds dropped by our losses.” 

Who knows? 

(262) 


OUR SAINTS. 


263 

“ Every pleasure we enjoy but a foretaste ” 
— remember, — “ The Christian’s whole life is 
but the earnest of the inheritance that awaits 
him.” 


“ O Almighty God, who hast knit together 
Thine elect in one communion and fellowship, 
in the mystical body of Thy Son Christ our 
Lord ; grant us grace so to follow Thy blessed 
saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we 
may come to those unspeakable joys which 
Thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly 
love Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Amen.” — Collect for All Saints’ Day, English 
Prayer-book. 

“ He will keep the feet of His saints.” — 1st 
Samuel ii. 9. 


* 






• > , 

f ■ 

r > 

* 


. 

















































































. 






♦ 








































































« 





































# 























